Dreaming of writing a best selling book or novel is delicious, but the reality is often far removed from that dream.

Apart from the need to produce creative output regularly and even when you have all the subject knowledge, characterisation, plotting, flair and wordcraft skill, you will still find that writing as a career is only successful for a small number of authors.

Most authors will struggle to get their work produced and published and if you have already chosen writing as a career then you will recognize the difficulties associated with this career choice.

The familiar feeling when the rejection slip arrives is almost enough to bring this exercise to an end, but as every author will agree writing can be very rewarding and satisfying to produce either a well constructed novel or an authorative work on a subject close to your heart.

So you really only have two choices: You can give up altogether
Or you can find another way

Which as most authors who have chosen writing as a career will say actually amounts to no choice at all!

You aren't going to give up so you must find another way. Now let's look at what you can do about it.

If you haven't already written your book don't let the potential difficulties put you off - go ahead and write it; the problem is not with you but with the response from the publisher or editor.

Even if they reject your book, it doesn't mean its no good, (but you knew that anyway) it just means they didn't like it or it didn't fit in with their idea of what sells.

Self-publishing is the answer and it can be easier than you think.

If you have already written your book and you have hit the rejection stonewall, don't give up, you have produced something from your heart and many people will like it enough to buy it.

Self-publishing is again the answer and it can be easier than you think.

Let me tell you what I do and show you the tools I use.

I didn't choose writing as a career, it chose me! But writing is what I do, whether it's in the writing of the content on my web-pages or because I am a Career Coach as well, in the production and publishing of ebooks on mainly career-based subjects.

I can show you how easily you can use colour, different font sizes and styles as well as chapter headings, lists and bullet points. Although I have chosen not to use page numbering it is very easy to insert page numbers.

What You Need to Make a Success of Writing as a Career

Your writing ability (which we will take as read);
Pride in the value of your work;
A willingness to learn and try another approach;
The right tools to produce your work;
Persistence and determination;
Readiness to follow marketing guidance

With all of that you will soon be able to say that writng as a career was a sound decision - you will not only have written and produced your own e-book, but you will have published it and what's more actually sold some copies!!

If you still want to go down the traditional route of producing a physical book or novel, it's much easier when you know the market is ready for you.

So Let's Get Started

It is very simple - all that stands between you and your success as a published writer is the lack of the required tools. If you take a look at either of the examples of my ebooks above you will note they are in Portable Document Format (.pdf). This is the most popular format for ebooks because it can be viewed on any PC or Apple Mac and the ebook will always look the same. other forms of presentation used by ebook compilers are often executable files (.exe) which can only be viewed on Windows based systems i.e. PCs and cannot be viewed on Macs so you limit the audience.

The software to produce .exe based ebooks is also usually fairly expensive for example Ebook Gold which is one of the best professional ebook compilers on the market costs $97.00 which is quite an expense when you are setting out.

Equally the top rated PDF creator Adobe Acrobat will cost at least $129.00 but you can get the reader free if you don't already have it.

However what you need when starting out is to keep the costs down so I recommend you download the free version of PDF Suite 995 which is the one I use all the time. It won't cost you anything and if you don't mind viewing some of their 'sponsor ads' for 30 seconds you don't need to pay for the upgrade.

You simply download and install it to your PC as a 'printer' and when you have prepared your document in MS Word you just select 'Print' and your PDF is produced. As simple as that!

You've Written Your Book - Now What?

To make a success of writing as a career you need to inform your audience about your book and get them to buy it.

First of all how do they find out about it?

I have found that the best way to publicise your new ebook is to write a short summary article (about 500 - 600 words) and submit this to an article directory.

As webmasters and publishers are always on the lookout for interesting new material this is the easiest way to get your book noticed with no cost attached.

You can see what I mean by looking at my articles at EzineArticles.com where my articles have been published on average 450 times each. You can also 'blog' about your ebook with a free account at Blogger.com

You have now conquered the two basics of production and promotion, although there are other ways to promote your ebook this will get you off to a great start.

Your audience must now be able to buy your book and the simplest way for you is to give them a digital download from a website.

If you don't have your own website or don't want one then I can help you out by featuring your book on my ebookdownloads.biz site.

You may just find then that you want to sell others' e-books as well as your own then far from just writing as a career you become a successful e-book merchant.

Of course you will also need to be able to accept payments on-line. Don't worry about expensive merchant accounts just get your free PayPal account and start taking debit and credit card payments immediately.

A lot of people are talking about the potential of the new generation of social networking sites (which they refer to as Web 2.0 sites) such as MySpace and YouTube where musicians have had great success in publicising their music - this could also be a valuable idea to build your writing career successfully.