I’m finally getting serious about writing and publishing a book about the Hermitage. I’ve got multiple chapters written, but not coherently arranged, and I hadn’t really thought about, what I do when the last word is written, edited, and re-edited.

My recent foray into making this blog available on the Amazon Kindle told me I’d better start doing some homework. So I have. And wow. What a lot of options there are out there.

I’m pretty sure I’m going the ‘self-publishing’ route... In the olden days, if you wanted to self-publish, you had to order as many books as you thought would sell, pay a huge up front printing cost, and then you had to find storage for all the books that you carted with you to bookstores, took to parties, and generally begged people to buy so that you could have your guest bedroom back. This inevitably involved your giving your books away at Christmas and for birthdays, and then a silent, horrible realization that you never wanted to do anything like that again. Your friends and family prayed that you would finally run out of those books.

Today’s self-publishing is a lot different... you write and design your book, get it proofed and edited by friends or professionals, and create a pdf file on your own computer, upload it to the publishing house, and get one proof copy back, to make sure it all came together the way you wanted to.

Then you’re ready for promotion, on various websites, blogs, and the like. The publisher/seller has your electronic book handy, and then prints it into a real book when the orders for it start coming in. No costly inventory, no get rid of the last books, no loss of a room in your house.

The two companies I’m examining right now are www.creativespace.com (an Amazon company) and www.lulu.com ... creativespace makes self-published books available on Amazon’s main website, and through real bookstores. That appeals to me, as I am a firm believer in local bookstores.

I also will make the book available on the Kindle.

But I’m still investigating...

Anybody out there have any experience with any of this? Any advice?