A long time ago, on a desktop far, far away...

That has not imagined not only writing their very own book, but seeing it in publications o-n Amazon.com, having a copy for their shelf, buying 'five copies for my mother'?

Well, you can now do it for a $99 charge and some cybernetic elbow grease. This site will show you how I did it, and chances are you can do it too. I have been studying for many years about Print On Demand, the nice new techology where you place in PDF files on one end (One for the address, one for the insides) and a beautiful, perfect-bound, bookstore-quality book comes out the other. I've even seen the technology in action at an document imaging tradeshow (that is my profession, from the way.)

I've known other folks who have used Print On-demand (POD) as a means to self-publish, including my own father. My problem with that's I've no room within my garage for books, I don't would like to get involved in the process of attempting to sell and shipping books, handling results, an such like.

Suddenly, while Googling some thing this morning, I stumbled on some excellent Goo. Amazon, the online bookstore, has absorbed a POD writer named BookSurge, which makes it a separate Amazon division. Get additional information about http://www.amazon.com/glass files by visiting our wonderful website. Now I can take my book project, publish it to Amazon/BookSurge, pay a price, and VOILA! my book is o-n Amazon for everybody to purchase. It delivers within 48 hours, BookSurge pays a 25% royalty to me within 60-days, I can also buy five copies for my mother at a discount!

I emailed BookSurge and was assigned an account manager, who I will call Joseph (since his name is Joseph). I asked concerning the information on publishing a book. For $599 I could get the hand-holding, mail us your manuscript version of the writing, or if I was brave, brave, and could format my own PDFs, for $99 I could use the Author's Express plan to publish my book projects.

Because my book generation project was made to be the forerunner of many more titles, $99 looked like the way to go.

I ran throughout the site, installing example PDFs, submission guidelines, and other things I could find. Your website recomends applying Adobe -something or another- for text formating, and Adobe Acrobat 6 (not 7!) for PDF creation.

I decided from the git-go that Microsoft Word and PDF Factory Pro will have to work with me, since that is what I'd on my desktop, and I do not want to spend weeks studying still another desktop publishing software, while I'm sure it is a great one.

Besides, I was already contemplating writing this page, and I wanted to come up with an activity most anybody would be comfortable with.

The only real secret I took is that my address is plain text, without any pictures onto it. I realized my first book will probably provide mainly if not entirely o-n Amazon, and a fairly cover is not that essential there. Whatever the case, I will always return and upgrade my version (The excess cost for resubmitting both the inside or the cover is $50, when the book is published.)

Sample files and an entire detailed explanation of how I prepared and published my three books (therefore far!) are at http://www.actasif.com/bookproject.