Recently on my Facebook page, I asked my Facebook followers what’s the way to go — traditional, small press, or self-publishing?

It’s been a question I’ve asked myself for a long, long time as I get closer toward finishing the revision of my novel. Could it be too early to ask that question of myself? After all, I should be concentrating on the words on the page.

Yes, but knowing what I’d like to do will only help me determine how much MORE work I have to do — formatting, marketing, editing (finding one myself).

When I asked this question, one of my friends, Lloyd Francis chimed in. He just published his book, from Rum to Roots, and talked a bit about his experience through the self-publishing process and why he decided to go that way.  (He’s got some great reasons!)

We’ll be talking via Google Hangout this week about this topic and I suspect others.   I’ll put a post up soon after. Here’s a bit about him:

Lloyd was born in Oakland in 1961, a first-generation American child to Jamaican parents. As a child his trips to Jamaica in the 60’s and 70’s shaped who he became. Growing up in Hayward California he was steeped in the island tradition of reggae, Jamaican cuisine, and patois.

After studying engineering, Lloyd became a staff photographer for the San Jose Mercury News. He left newspapers to work for Yahoo Financial News Network and returned to journalism after 9-11. In 2001 Lloyd reported from Iraq for Newsweek Magazine, and went on to cover the war in Afghanistan. In 2004 he accepted a job with the Army Times Publishing Company and worked in Iraq intermittently for two years.

Currently he lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children.

So, what do you want to know about the self-publish processes? What do you want to know about his book? Let me know in the comments below.