When I was growing up and later when I first began to write books, I learned about Vanity presses. These are publishing houses that publish a book at the author’s expense. 

Back in those days, it was relatively expensive to publish a book. Thus, publishing companies gave careful thought as to how many copies of a book they were likely to be able to sell. A great many books were written but never published.

Others were published at the author's expense via Vanity presses.

Computer technology has greatly changed this situation. Once a book manuscript is ready to publish, one can self-publish on the Web or through a variety of companies at no cost. The book can be made available free or at a price set by the author. There need not be a large (and expensive) “middle person” involved in the deal.

Also, there are a number of “print on demand” or “very small press run” companies. These publish a combination of books that are being sold for profit and books of a Vanity press nature.

The first 40 or so books that I wrote were published commercially. Since then I have self-published about a dozen books on the Web, making them available free to anyone who wanted to do a download.

Still more recently, I have begun experimenting with publishing books in Kindle format through Amazon.com. These books are being sold at very low prices and can be read on a Kindle, PC or Mac computer, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, and iPhone. You can see seven of my Kindle books at:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node=154606011&field-keywords=David+Moursund&x=0&y=0

 In some sense, one can think of my free books on the Web and the Kindle books as a Vanity press phase of my writing career. I want to write the books that I want to write—regardless of whether a publishing company thinks they will make money. I want the immediate gratification of seeing my books published immediately after I complete the writing. I want to be able to make changes to may books in a timely fashion.

The most recent of my self-published books is Becoming More Responsible for Your Education: Self-help Book for Teenagers. It is a somewhat revised and updated (Second Edition) of a book that I made available free on the Web a few years ago. Perhaps 2,000 people down loaded that free book.

The new book sells for a dollar, and I make 30 cents on each copy sold.  In the About the Author section of the book I included the statement:

Warning to readers: Experts in the field have not peer reviewed this book. It is important you learn to judge for yourself the quality of the information and learning sources you use. Some information about me may help convince you that I am a reliable source of information.

That warning is in keeping with the overall message of that book that students need to judge for themselves whether the materials they can access (for example, via the Web) are of sufficient quality and correctness so that they are worthy of being read.