Just like many of you one of my dreams has been to write a book. I never knew if this dream would ever become a reality but finally it has!

The name of my book is Heartfelt Emotions and is a collection of my poetry. These poems come deep from within my heart and now they are all in one place and copy written by me.

I began by using Google Docs to collect all of my content, and making corrections for the finished product, then putting it into a PDF file and uploading it to lulu. Google Docs is free to use as long as you have a Google account. It is something like word but right on line. It will allow you to create and share files if you like. If I can use it so can you.

For publishing my book I found  Lulu.com . This site will walk you through the process of completing your book from paperback to hard cover. It not only lets you publish but it will also give you a free ISBN number which will allow you to sell your book worldwide.

ISBN numbers can be bought from other places but Lulu will give you one for free. Bowker is the top seller of ISBN numbers but they do not like to sell just one number and if they do it will cost you almost as much as buying ten. Usually these numbers are sold in groups not individually.

Lulu will also help promote your published book and it can be sold at other book stores such as Barnes &Nobles and Amazon making your visibility much larger.

You can also set your own price for your book and you can also add a download copy and set your price for that too. There are many tools that are free to use on Lulu and they make it easy for you to get noticed.

Image via Wikipedia

Promotion is key for anything and you can promote your book  the same ways you do here on Triond using Stumble Upon and Twitter among other social networking sites. I am finding this very exciting because not only do I have a new book published but also did not need a ton of money to get started. Lulu also gives you 60% of the profits when your book is sold. You also get a discount when you buy 25 or more of your own books.

It seems to good to be true, but guess what it is not. So for any of you who have the dream of becoming an Author and having your master piece in print lulu makes it a reality. If you are not completely satisfied you can also remove your book from the site and put it any place you want, but the hard part of writing and corrections are done.

So with this all said, if you want to publish a book and don’t have tons of start up money, go check out lulu and get started. See you in print!