Wanna Be a Paperback Writer?

Goodbye to those literary agents and big publishing houses that put judgement on whether or not to publish your words. Hello to yet another do-it-yourself web genre. This one's for wannabe novelists, how-to-gurus, poets, and memoir writers.

Traditionally, self-publishing your own book was relegated to companies found on late night infomercials or back-of-the-book magazine ads. New web sites like Blurb.com, Lulu.com, and Wordclay let you go from the idea stage straight through to your published book without dealing with the cast of extras: layout artists, copy editors, agents, and distributors—and without sharing the royalties. Unfortunately they don't do much to distribute and market your opus either.

With these sites, creating your book is free. Printing it costs money, but these sites all print your book on demand. If you've got 15 family members who want to read the family history, then you print 15 books. If your friends want to create a cookbook of favorites, it can look like the pros'. What they don't do is distribute the book for you. For that you're on your own.

Lulu is probably the largest of the sites. Founded in 2002, it claims to have published 300,000 titles. You set your own price for what the finished book should cost. You can go it alone or purchase add-on services including marketing, graphics, and pre-publication. Then each time you want a book published, you give Lulu 20% of the price that you've set for your book. They'll even give you an ISBN—needed if you go into distribution via commercial stores.

What I like: Makes it easy to sell your creations to the Lulu Marketplace and offers great toolkits to help you self-promote.

Blurb.com is by far the prettiest site, one that makes me think of creating a luscious family photo album, cookbook, or nature photography book. Download the blurb maker and lay out your book for free. You pay $12.95 to print a 40-page softcover book and $22.95 for hardcover.

What I like: Blurb takes the guesswork out of things like using photography by offering simple advice and constraints. Clear advice like this abounds: "Blurb books are printed at 300 DPI. The largest photos you can use—full page pictures in our 13x11 book—should be no bigger than 3900x3300 pixels." The best choice for books with photos.

A spinoff from the real world personal publishing company, iUniverse, Wordclay is the newest of the self-publishing sites, but its roots are in traditional custom book publishing. You can create your book in MS Word and upload it into the publishing templates. Then you can publish as few or as many as you like. Wordclay has lots of add-on services like copyediting, pagination, professional editorial help, and more. They've made decisions about things like boo trim size and gutter width pretty easy to understand.

What I like: Offers extensive add-on professional services and has the benefit of a successful offline publication house.

Final word to all boomers: According to Wordclay's CEO Susan Driscoll, guess which demographic are the most prolific self-publishing book authors? You got that right. It's the ones with time, money, and a story to tell. Have any of you self published a book online? 

Related: This blogger endorses Lulu, but he's a good resource to read if you're thinking of publishing that opus.