Self publishing via the web

Want to publish your own book? Lulu is an on-demand publishing service that prints and ships each book as it is ordered, then offers online tools for authors to sell and market their books over the Web. With no upfront fees, Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/) takes a commission only when each book is sold. Blurb (http://www.blurb.com) works in a similar way - it's  self-professed goal is to "bring book publishing to the masses," in part through software that helps authors lay out their manuscripts. Each company transmits the author's final manuscript over the Internet to a professional printing firm, where it is printed, bound and shipped directly to the purchaser or author. No warehouses or bookstores are involved, as in traditional publishing. Blurb and Lulu say they are unleashing people's pent-up desire to publish books that otherwise might have never existed, much the same way that Web logs triggered a new wave of self-expression.