Ever since my first book, Written in Stone, found a home at Bellevue Literary Press I have had a number of people ask me how to publish their own books. How does a book go from being an idea to a real, dead-tree product? I will be discussing some of the details of this process (especially using online resources to write and promote books) with Rebecca Skloot and Tom Levenson in a few weeks at ScienceOnline2010, but I thought I would cover some of the basics here.

The first and most crucial step of the process is coming up with a book to write! This is not as easy as it might sound. Identifying a good subject