• You are not dependent on the continued existence of any one software publisher. Computer software is a volatile business, and you take certain risks when you choose to work with any one company. STEP lets you maintain control of your own products. You can still work with a software company to provide a STEP book reader to accompany your books, if you choose.
• By publishing your own material, you no longer have to rely on royalty income from electronic publishers. You receive 100% of the income from these products.
• In contrast to generic electronic publishing solutions (such as Adobe Acrobat and Folio Views), STEP is implicitly "Bible aware" and automatically creates links to Bible verses and provides book reader software with the indexes necessary to perform powerful Bible verse searches.
• STEP was designed by book publishers in cooperation with software companies. The tools you use to create STEP books were developed to integrate smoothly into your existing production processes. Any person in your company who can operate a word processor will be able to learn to create STEP books using the WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") editing tools in the STEP Publishers Toolkit.
• There is a growing community of STEP "taggers" who can be contracted to help you create your STEP books.

• Macros for Microsoft Word that ease the tagging of STEP books (see the STEP specification for details on the tagging language)
• The STEP Conversion Program that turns your Word files into the data files necessary for STEP book readers to view your books
• License to use Word Macros and Conversion Program on up to ten PCs at a single location
• Complete documentation
• Technical support
• Updates to all components of the Toolkit as they are released at no additional charge
• License to use the STEP Logo on all books developed while your Toolkit license is current

Cost of the STEP Publishers Toolkit is $4125 for the first year, and $995 per year thereafter.

Instead of self-publishing, you might want to simply license your books to one of the STEP software publishers. Each offers different benefits and services that might be of value to you. See the Email List for contact information at each company. The benefit of working with a STEP software company over a non-STEP company is that you have a larger audience for STEP products (and thus higher potential royalty income) than for any other non-STEP product.

Another alternative is to have your books tagged and STEP files created by another company that has the STEP Publishers Toolkit, then market them under the STEP Logo. As long as the other company's Toolkit license is up-to-date, you can license the STEP Logo for $995/year for use on these products.