We live in an age of easy self-publishing. It’s so easy, in fact, that a lot of people are doing it who shouldn’t. The online book stores are full of e-books that never should have seen the light of day. Their covers suck, their contents suck, and the marketing sucks.

Nevertheless, I’m convinced that e-books are pure gold. And I’m further convinced that if you have an expertise, you should write and publish an e-book.

Here are 5 reasons to publish your own e-book today:

1. I’m not saying you shouldn’t publish traditionally, but the speed from conception to publication is a lot faster with digital self-publishing. As you know, time is money. You don’t want to sit on your idea until it is outdated. If your knowledge has any chance of becoming obsolete any time soon, then digital self-publishing might be your best option.
2. There are more distribution options today for digital self-publishers than ever before. You can sell your e-books on your own website, but there’s a better than even chance that most of your sales will come from Amazon. And if you’re a savvy self-marketer, you could get decent sales at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple’s iBook store. Smashwords is an e-book distributor that will send your book to all sorts of cool places, including Baker and Taylor and Library Direct.
3. Prestige. Plain and simple. Just saying you are a published author is really cool. Not everyone can do that. If you’re the kind of person who likes to impress his friends, self-publish an e-book.
4. Publishing an e-book can also make you more money. You are selling your expertise. That’s money in the bank. And you can get a bigger piece of the pie publishing your book yourself than if you go through a traditional publisher. That is, you’ll make more per copy sold.
5. There is a huge demand for your knowledge. You have a blog, you have a newsletter, people are reading your stuff and thirst for more. Why not give it to them? Publish an e-book. That will solidify in their minds that you are indeed the expert, and they will seek you out when they want to know more.

Self-publishing isn’t for everyone, but if you have any business savvy and an expertise in a high demand area of knowledge, it could be pure gold to you.