A nation of sidewalk publishers

In Larry Layman's self-published westerns, the cowboy always gets the girl. In real life, the married Illinois cop has another goal - to get a real publisher.

The problem? Mr. Layman's six novels tend to play only in Peoria, where he writes his books in his police car during slow periods on patrol. He's still an unknown outside the Land of Lincoln, despite spending thousands to print copies of his westerns.

"I don't think I'll make a bestseller list, but I'd like to be on the bookstore shelves at more than one Barnes & Noble" - that is, the one in Peoria, says Layman. And it would be nice to be paid by a publisher instead of the other way around.

Layman currently pays iUniverse about $500 to print each book. Only a tiny percentage of the company's offerings are picked up by traditional publishers. "If you go into [self-publishing] thinking you'll be rich, you'll be in for a rude awakening," Layman says.

But not every Louis L'Amour, John Grisham, and Barbara Cartland wannabe fully realizes the difficulty of achieving financial success. Interest in self-publishing is taking off like a runaway bestseller. IUniverse, which prints several thousand books annually, reports submissions are up 17 percent in the first six months of this year.

In many cases, authors "don't really understand how the [publishing] industry works, and they're very angry when it doesn't work out," says Charlotte Abbott, senior editor at Publishers Weekly. To make things worse, "there are people preying on their dreams."

Publishing your own book hasn't always been easy. Just a decade ago, it wasn't cost-efficient for publishers to print less than a few hundred copies, so a run of a book could cost $10,000 or $15,000. In return, hundreds of unsold copies might stack up in the author's garage.

But the advent of "print on demand" technology in the late 1990s allows dozens of self-publishing companies to print small numbers of books. For as little as $459, anyone can produce a so-called "vanity press" book. Editing services are often available at extra cost.

Not everyone is a fan of this nearly do-it-yourself industry. Publishing insiders either ignore the books or scoff at their questionable quality. In fact, while iUniverse prints 350 to 400 titles a month, fewer than 50 titles are picked up by traditional publishers each year - that's about 0.5 percent.

On the other hand, there's no denying the rare success stories, which frequently inspire hopeful authors. Most notably, the self-published bestseller "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want You to Know About" continues to top the sales charts despite author Kevin Trudeau's history of legal problems, including a prison term. Last year, Mr. Trudeau paid a $2 million federal fine over unsubstantiated medical claims, and officials banned him from any form of advertising about health products or programs.

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