An author you just can't refuse
Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller are among the world's most respected authors, but for a while they had a hard time finding a publisher. Rather than seek a mainstream outlet for racy novels such as The Black Book and Tropic of Cancer, they used the Obelisk Press, a French publishing house started by Jack Kahane to print his own novel. That was the 1930s. Now, a young Henry Miller could use new Internet companies like Blurb.com, i-Universe, Lulu.com or Xlibris to print his book - and even sell it through their online stores. Gwen Fuller used Blurb (www.blurb.com) to publish her book, Do Mallet the Suitcase, a collection of spam e-mail arranged as haiku. Avoiding traditional publishing was a plus for Fuller, 48, a life coach in Menlo Park, California. "There was a process that I was sort of unwilling to get engaged in when there was something that could so immediately deliver a quality book," she said. Blurb requires customers to download its software, which then lets th...