Electronic or digital publishing resources

Summary:

It is now possible to publish documents electronically and receive payments or royalties for them. Here is a brief discription of some resources.

Answer:

Many organizations publish reports for which they charge a small fee. Handling inventory and shipping can be a significant distraction and cost.

Online publication of digital copies which can be downloaded and printed offers an attractive alternative. The services listed here allow the publisher to receive payments for documents published in this way. There are also procedures for distributing paper copies through bookstores and copy shops.

iUniverse

http://www.iuniverse.com
Books on demand, but apparently not downloadable digital files. Must be
between 108 and 740 pages. Associated with Barnes&Noble, with (they say)
kiosks in stores.
Also links to Kinko's "ExpressYourselfPress" which is oriented toward
college professors making materials ("for which you own the copyright")
available, apparently through Kinko's stores.

Universal Publisher

http://www.upublish.com/
Oriented toward books. Charges a setup fee of $495. Pays royalties.
Publishes either as a paperbound book or as a downloadable file. Affiliated
with Amazon.

Etc.

Wikipedia has an article on this subject at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print_on_demand

A Google search for |book publishing on demand| will yield many vendors (including those listed above).

For online publishing the conventional format is Adobe Acrobat's .pdf file. The software to create these files costs about $250. For limited use, though, Adobe offers an online service that will convert Word (and other format) files to .pdf without charge. There are some limitations. See http://createpdf.adobe.com/.

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Updated 1/14/10 to remove several broken links -- PB