Publishing an autobiography 

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Publishing

"I’ve finished!"

So you’ve researched, planned, written and edited your autobiography. That’s all the hard work done ... isn’t it?

It depends.

You now have to be brutally honest with yourself, and go back to your original reason for writing an autobiography. Answer this question: Do you want to try and get this properly published, or not?
To be properly published you need to have an agent. An agent will only take you on if he thinks he can sell your work. But the agent knows more about the market than you do and if an agent doesn’t think he can do it, then he’s probably right. But there are a lot of agents so you just keep trying. Each agent will have a specific way of wanting to receive any submissions, sometimes they want a letter first, sometimes they’ll take your work cold.

In the UK you want "The Writers & Artists Yearbook" or "The Writers Handbook", in the US it’s "Writers Market". Also check out the Editors & Preditors website. See the references section.

Warning: Any agent that wants upfront payment from you is probably a con. It’s that simple, no matter what they claim they want it for. A real agent makes his money from selling your work, they don’t want money from you.

For autobiographies you cannot go to a publisher direct, you have to have an agent.
Self-publishing is a sticky subject, it is never right for novels but for autobiographies it can make sense particularly if you just want a limited number of copies for a special reason.
If you go to a real printer it will be expensive, but the quality should be good. The other option is an online on-demand publisher like lulu.com, this is free to prepare the book you only pay for the copies you want, but the quality of on-demand digital printing is lower than "proper" printing.

So, you pays your money and takes your choice.

Good luck.