Almost everyone got their own blog these days or at least a web site with some information or articles, but not everyone have published their own book. I can agree with those of you who claim that not everyone got ideas that are worth printing, but I've seen a lot of nice ideas that should be printed.
It's not that hard to get published:
simply do it yourself. I got my own book printed and published with a budget of about $170.
How to do it 1. Write your book. This is actually the hard part since you need to have a good idea and you have to do some research before you start writing. Once this has been done and you have written the text you want to publish it's really simple :D
2. Apply for a ISBN. All books need an ISBN so the book can be identified at libraries and bookstores. Over at isbn-international.org you'll find a complete list of national ISBN agencies where you can apply for your own ISBN. Since I'm located in Sweden I applied at www.kb.se and if you live in US you can apply at www.isbn.org.
3. When you got your ISBN you need to make sure it's mentioned on the first page of your book and on your cover (usually you'll find some instructions at the website for your national ISBN agency). You also need to create a bar code for your cover (so that libraries and bookstores can scan your book). At Bookland you can create a free bar code from your ISBN: http://www.tux.org/~milgram/bookland/
4. I printed my book at CafePress.com so I simply uploaded the book (in PDF format), the cover (both front and back) and some information about the book at their website. If you don't have any software for creating PDF files you can get one at CutePDF.com.
5. After the upload at CafePress.com they sent me a PDF preview with the first 5 pages, 5 pages from the middle and the last 5 pages so I could make sure that the book looked OK. When I had verified that everything looked OK, I simply ordered 10 books with my credit card and after about 1 week I got the books delivered to my address.
6. Some ISBN agencies (like the Swedish ISBN Agency) require you to send legal deposits to them. If you're required to do so you got information about that when you applied for your ISBN along with instructions on how to send your legal deposits to them.
7. If you want your book in bookstores like Amazon.com or BN.com you should have a look at these quick start guides:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId61234
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/help/cds2.asp?PID48&z=y&cds2Pid
10&linkidE9604
It could be a good idea to have a look at these guides before you design your cover to make sure that your book meet all requirements.
8. Now you just have to wait for your first order (you can of course also advertise your book to speed up the order intake :D ).
Please post here if you have successfully published your book or if you have any more tips for people publishing books.
