Writing your book was the easy part,

 

   Now you need to find a publisher, I hope you have been researching for one while working on your story. I can give you addresses of many but you probably would get the same reception that I got. “We're to busy, send in a manuscript and we will look it over and get back to you. Or we don’t do poetry, etcetera”.

  So now lets talk about self-publishing There are many reasons to self publish. The most important one is that you retain ownership of your book; a publisher would own the rights to your book and market it at their price and also receive all future orders. Of course they would send you a check for about 10 to 15% of the sales.
   Another way to self-publish is to make your pages camera ready and send it out in manuscript form to a publisher that specializes in printing for self publishing authors. They do not own your book they just print it for you. Also they do not set the price, or market them, that is your job. (I hope you understand that your book will not be a money making experience by any means, just hope to recover some of the expenses you have incurred.) Getting back to the required parameters of your book by the publisher, you must have all pictures in order, just the way the printing company wants them to be and the pages would have to be marked where the pictures were to be placed.
     So you see self-publishing a book is like building a house, you can sublet some of the work out to a print shop and maybe get your book printed and bound or you can do it by your self one stick at a time.