The Fantasy of Free Quality Self-Publishing

This ad appeared in the July 17 & 24, 1995 issue of The New Republic. There's a fantasy afoot among writers today that you can produce an attractive book with no set-up fees through companies offering print on demand services like Createspace and Lulu.com. As PODdymouth explains in an ongoing series of thoughtful posts, this is an unrealistic assumption. If you had Professional Press produce 500 copies of your book back in 1995, you'd have spent about $1,000 and have 500 copies of your book in your possession. With a full-service POD outfit, you might spend close to that and end up with just a handful of copies or even none, just PDF files on their server waiting until someone, usually you, order a copy. So, has POD technology really made self-publishing more affordable?