They say that everyone has at least one novel inside them. If you're a frustrated author or want to publish your own non-fiction book about your favourite topic then this article will show you how to self-publish your own book at no cost. There's no need to pay a vanity press to create a print run of your book in advance and unlike e-books you have a tangible product to sell.

The first part of this series looked at companies offering merchandise shops that can be used to sell your own custom designs on products such as t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, bears and even books or CDs. The second part then looked at how you can use the products to promote your own business.

The first part introduced CafePress.com, a US based company that has a wide range of products that you can customise with your own designs and sell in your own shop. They offer a print on demand service that allows you to publish your own books without the upfront cost of printing. This book is only printed and bound when someone buys it, so there's no cost to you. The customer pays the price you set for the book - CafePress.com sets a base price based upon the type of binding and size of book and you set a price greater than (or equal to) the base price. Anything above the base price is your profit margin on the book.

The first step is to write your book. As you are self publishing, there will be no publisher or editor to proof read it so you will need to be careful of spelling, punctuation and even legal issues such as copyright. Once the text is written, then you need to format it for your chosen book. CafePress.com has a section that advises about formatting the books and even has word templates for each size of book offered. You can choose to make your book a regular paperback size, a smaller 'supermarket' paperback size or as a larger technical manual size or even US letter size. Depending on the size and number of pages, there are three binding options.

• A standard paperback book binding, just like any other book you buy in the shops, is available for books of at least 50 pages (not available for letter sized books).
• A spiral binding, such as those seen on notepads and journals, which can be used on larger sized books.
• A magazine/comic book style binding that ties the pages together with fiber 'staples'. This is used for books with a small number of pages and doesn't have a spine.

To create your book in CafePress.com, you need to upload it as a black and white Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format file in the correct dimensions. There are many ways of creating PDFs without having to pay for Adobe Acrobat, one of the best is to use the OpenOffice.org office suite which can create PDFs directly from its word processor, is MS Office compatible and best of all is free. Download it from OpenOffice.org.

To create the cover for your book, you'll need to download the template, edit it in an image editing program and upload it back to the site. You'll need to create a front and back cover. The front cover and blurb on the back cover is what you use to sell your book to prospective customer so its important to get it right. You may need to leave some white space on the back of the book so that CafePress.com can add the ISBN number and bar code. You'll also need to create an image for the spine of the book. CafePress.com will tell you what size this needs to be based on the number of pages once you have uploaded the PDF file.

The final step is to add the details of the book to your shop and choose the price. CafePress.com sets the base price based upon the size of the book, number of pages and type of binding. If you set the price higher then you keep the difference as profit when the book is sold.

In order to take full advantage of print on demand, why not create several different editions of the book? Different editions can be used to target different markets. A different size of book or different cover may attract different customers (e.g. a more masculine cover may increase sales to men if the original cover was very feminine, or a junior edition that appeals more to children). A large print book may appeal more to older readers. Note: you can only have one book per free shop you have, so if you want to sell several books in the same shop you'll need a paid account. You can however create more shops for each market with different logos etc.

You can also use the other products that CafePress.com offers to promote your book or generate extra revenue from a popular book.

Finally, why not create an audio book of your masterpiece? CafePress.com can also be used to create real audio or data CDs. These are created from master discs which need to be sent to them or can also upload MP3 files for audio CDs. Just record yourself (or a friend with a nice voice) reading your book out loud, convert it to MP3 format and upload it. If you've written a lot of books, you can offer them as an e-book collection on data CD for a discount price.

The final part of this feature will look at creating an audio CD to launch a music band.

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