reported by Steven B. Alan, FictionFanatic.com

Milwaukee author Diane Lau was busy conducting promotion for her soon-to-be-released fifth book when she heard the news every author dreads: her publisher was closing its doors.

Lau, who writes romance stories under the pen name Diana Laurence, had found much success for the previous two years selling books through a Florida-based publisher. She already had a contract and advance orders for the third anthology in her "Soulful Sex" series. But now it appeared "Soulful Sex: Erotic Tales of Fantasy and Romance Volume III" would not see the light of day.

It was a familiar scenario for Lau. Eight years before, she was about to release two titles through a Canadian publisher when it closed. In 1998, she made the tough decision to solve the problem by opening her own small publishing company, Living Beyond Reality Press. She hired a printer to do very short runs of the two books--500 copies for about $2,000--and taught herself web site design in order to promote them. In the years that followed, she sold a few copies through http://www.livingbeyondreality.com, but it was understandably difficult to generate sales from a small personal web site.

Now Lau faced a similar dilemma; however, times and technology have changed drastically. For one thing, electronic books are now a low-cost publishing option, with ebooks becoming more popular every year. Print-on-demand (POD) technology has also come into its own, allowing publishers to print books even one copy at a time, at a quality indistinguishable from traditional trade paperbacks, keeping initial investment low. Possibly the most important advancement is the additional distribution channels in place via the Internet that permit publishers to reach millions of buyers all over the world.

"Everything I'd learned in two years about book publishing today told me the opportunity was huge," says Lau. "I'd had two years to establish a readership and credibility, so it wasn't like self-publishing can be if no one knows who you are. I knew what the costs were and what the upside was. The decision was a lot easier for me in 2006."

Lau was determined to see her new book launched in mid-March as she had been announcing in promotions. But she also needed to re-publish all her old titles. She had a month to get the work done, while maintaining her day job as a marketing coordinator and web marketer.

Fortunately, Lau had practice at most of the skills required for the endeavor. She was familiar with creating ebooks in the two most popular formats, Adobe PDF and Microsoft Reader. She had designed most of her book covers herself using Photoshop and knew about requirements for preparing covers for press. She had designed and typeset her 1998 titles and quickly got herself caught up on the new requirements for text files.

A company called Lightning Source, Inc. made the business end of the publishing simple. LSI is not only a POD publisher, but it hosts and distributes ebook files. The company has established relationships with all the significant online booksellers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. By setting herself up with LSI, Lau was also arranging to have her titles appear for sale on dozens of affiliate web sites. LSI handles all orders from these booksellers, and pays the publisher its fee.

LSI also sells direct to publishers, so Lau set up her own online bookstore, again using the Internet's familiar tools. The online payment service PayPal provides secure transactions for the store, and its division PayLoadz offers a service that provides immediate downloads for orders of ebooks. Lau handles shipping of print books from her store, but she doesn't have to worry about fulfillment of ebook orders.

"It's just incredible how the Internet provides everything you need from printing to marketing, distribution to fulfillment," says Lau. "I even purchase postage online through the U.S.P.S. web site and never have to go to the post office."

Obviously promotion is key to success in the publishing business, but as most authors know, even large publishing houses leave that mostly to authors. Lau was accustomed to putting a lot of time and effort into promoting her books online, using techniques like writing columns, doing interviews and online chats, keeping a blog, offering a newsletter, and distributing free sample ebooks through the Living Beyond Reality Press Read Free Project. That part of the business would stay status quo, including the launch of her deck of romance trading cards in April and her planned appearance to speak at the Romantic Times National Convention in May in Daytona Beach.

By March 11, Lau had completed her goal, publishing a total of three print books and eight ebooks in a month. Her initial investment came in at under $750 to complete set-up of the books, with 40% of that money going for purchase of a block of ISBN numbers. Lau watched happily as the titles reappeared for sale, and smiled at the new?and larger?profits. The other advantage of self-publishing is that Lau was able to lower most of her book prices and still make a profit substantially above her former royalties.

"It was an exhausting month," says the author/publisher, "but extremely satisfying. And now I get to reap the benefits of the work."

Was there a downside to removing a separate publishing house from the equation? "It's not for everyone," replies Lau. "Now I have to do everything but the editing--an author still has to have an editor--but fortunately I enjoy it all. Although next time it will be nice just publishing one title at a time!"

Having been affected twice by the volatility of the publishing industry, Lau can't put a price on the peace of mind. "It's worth the work tenfold to have not only all the creative control, but also the knowledge that you aren't relying on anyone else to keep your books for sale. As long as tools like LSI, Amazon and PayPal are out there and the web is alive, Diana Laurence books will be in the hands of readers. To me that's the best part of all."

Diana Laurence's books are available from Living Beyond Reality Press and online bookstores, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Fictionwise, and Powell's Books. Additional information is available at http://www.dianalaurence.com.