Don't Do It Yourself: Start a Book Publishing Empire with Mechanical Turk

Step 6 Promote your book online. Become an instant best seller. Profit.

Finally, it's time to recoup all of your investments. Time to wear the self-promotion hat: Make a web page with pictures and back story about your book. Link to the book's blurb page on your site to let others buy the book. Then think about the right kind of blogs to advertise your book on.

Technorati's Top 100 Blogs are a good place to start. For my "Amazing but true stories about cats," I targeted BoingBoing, some pet sites, and some blogs about self-publishing.

Surprisingly enough, total strangers are perfectly willing to spend $20 to $30 on a neat idea. You won't get much of a cut per book from Blurb if you want to keep the book affordable - $1 to $5 is probably reasonable.

If you're diligent about promotion, eventually a royalty check from Blurb will land in your mailbox. I made $42.15 on the first check. That's barely breaking even, but all publishing empires start small...