Despite a long and noble tradition of self-publishing, going the DIY route still carries a certain stigma to it. If you're invested your own cash in printing up your book the implicit assumption is that it wasn't good enough in the first place. You can point out to your heart's content that plenty of the books in the shops are utter trash and that being published is more to do with profit margins than quality control but still... you're not really published.

Still, they'll be laughing on the other side of their faces when you've sold your first million copies...

After all, you've got the book cover and proof setting done on www.elance.com for a song and by printing 1000 books you've reduced the price of each book to about $2. If you sell for $10 then you've made a profit of $8000!

Thing is, it's one thing to print up a few thousand books and another thing to move them. No distributor is likely to take you seriously unless you have a unusually charming sales pitch and so your books are unlikely to be stocked at Borders any time soon. You can offload maybe 10 or 20 copies to sympathetic friends and family but after that sales start petering out...

Self-publishing means doing all the nitty-gritty of the business that most writers would rather avoid like the plague. You have to check the design, the technical specs, arrange for printing, storage and then you have to try and get the word out there. Meanwhile you're in debt for the printing bills and your mother can't park her car in the garage for all the boxes of unsold books blocking the way.

The self-published author will do well to push his books on nearby independent bookshops and give as many readings as he can, making the most of the local press to publicise his efforts. It's small, it's slow but it's real. Whereas trying to get a national newspaper to review a self-published book or getting a major bookshop to stock it is pretty much a pipe dream.

Of course, you can still sell copies of your book through your website by sticking a paypal button up there and posting the books one by one as the orders come in.

But how is anyone going to find your website?

And wouldn't you like to save the money printing those books by going the Print On Demand route?