Perhaps thousands of beginning writers every year get discouraged and never write or publish their first book. I know that I thought about writing my first book for 20 years. I even bought a TRS 80 from Radio Shack in an attempt to write a book in the 1990's. Having no technical computer ability I could barely get the green screen turned on. Eventually I sold the computer for a VW Rabbit. Still I dreamed of writing for a living. In 2012 I read that Amazon.com had ways to self-publish e-books, paperbacks and audiobooks. They would make them available in more than 100 countries via the internet and produce them when they were ordered. They would mail the paperbacks to the customers at no charge to me Then, the company would direct deposit the royalties to my bank account. Best of all they paid a 35% to 70% royalty My family was in publishing in the 1990's, and this level of reward to the author is many times the well establish rate for marketable authors. I was terribly excited when I realized that at no cost I could become a published author.