So you want to publish a book. Do you have a blog? Have you had your blog for some time? Have you been writing posts like there's no tomorrow (or day after anyway)? Then why not write a blook?

And what is a blook you ask? A blook is a blog that has been turned into a book. Pure and simple. And why not? They turn diaries into books, don't they? They turn journals into books. Some are even quite successful.

Then why not a blog?

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The material is all there. You even have feedback from readers already. It's a natural. And that is what I did! I turned my humor blog, Cranelegs Pond, into "Cranelegs Pond the blook". And I did it quite quickly, quite cheaply, and with fantastic results.

You can too!

It's easy thanks to a most odd bedfellow, Amazon. They have a subsidiary, CreateSpace, that is, as far as I can tell, the best self publishing offering around. If you are okay with a quality, standard paperback (they offer a few other options as well), you might want to give them a look. They take the cost out of vanity. Don't get me wrong. They don't take the vanity out of vanity, just the cost. If you are a diligent, detail oriented sort, this could be your answer to that first self published book, and I guarantee you, it won't break the bank.

My story may be able to give you a good idea of what is involved.

After several years of blogging and at the same time having a boatload of rejection letters from agents and publishers for a collection of short stories I was pushing, I decided it was time to do something completely different. So I selected 150 of the best posts from my blog, organized them in a way that tells a little story, and started looking for an inexpensive but professional self publishing solution.

With the help of fellow blogger/writer, Pam Beers, who took an early interest in my humor writing, we plowed through dozens of options. My qualifications were simple: 1) it had to be cheap, and 2) the cover had to be good. The former is easy to understand but the latter needs some discussion. I believe strongly in the new adage, you will judge a blook by its cover. So the cover had to look like the real deal. And I didn't want to have to work with a "creative staff" to design one for additional costs. I wanted a free, easy-to-customize selection of templates to work with. I tried a few self publishing solutions that after an hour or two of file moves and layout issues, always fell short when I got to the cover.

Not CreateSpace.

I found a front and back cover template that closely matched what I was looking for in terms of form and appearance. I was able to change the colors, fonts, titles, and back cover text easily. And better yet, I was able to upload the pictures I wanted, albeit I had to play around with a free trial of Adobe Photoshop to get them to the minimum 300 dpi.

But at the end of the day, It was a beautiful thing.

Yada, yada, yada! I had a completed blook. I had already decided to pay the annual $39 fee for the professional membership option over the free option. I did this because it made "cents" over the long haul for my business plan. So I gleefully ordered my first proof and paid the pricey two day delivery fee (because of unchecked glee mostly). The cost: $2.17 for a 108 page book, plus the shipping fee of $12.

[note: if you are able to control the glee factor, you can do this for a lot less, depending on number of pages of course.]

From the moment I ordered to the time I received the blook, it took three business days. Simply stated, the proof copy exceeded my expectations by a long shot! Holy smokes! It actually looked like a book!

I made changes and ordered another proof (a few cents more because I now had 110 pages). More glee. Blah, blah, blah. I finally had my finished blook. I promptly ordered 40 copies, shipped at a moderate glee price of $12, and had them at my front door in less than a week at a total cost of just under $100. I had met all my objectives. The closest other self publishing option that would have been able to generate the cover I wanted would have been at least $300.

Also, for no charge, CreateSpace took care of the ISBN number and gave me three channels for sales: 1) an e-store option that gives me a pretty good royalty per book sold, 2) Amazon, which has a more pricey cost per book, and 3) Target, which is essentially an extension of Amazon.

So now it's up to me. It's time for the transition from self-published to self promoted, something that doesn't come easy to me. It puts the capital "V" into Vanity! We'll see, after all, the proof will be in the pudding. With a lot of pudding and a little luck, who knows, maybe I'll be firing off snappy one-liners to Oprah's probing questions—the delusional thoughts of a gleeful, self-published writer.

So have at it my unpublished peeps and happy self-publishing!