A good source of research material but- buyer beware.Writingworld.com A wealth of information at this site, but be aware of competitors leading you in the direction they want you to go. I find that the main source of competition between online self-publishing companies are companies who want to FORMAT your book for you (and dissuade you from learning these skills yourself)and on-line printing companies who can produce inexpensively as long as you can format your own book and cover. There is no question that even with basic or intermediary computer skills, formatting your book can be very difficult and frustrating. It gets tiresome reading your own book over and over again. But with some precautionary measures, you can reduce your frustration. Some of the most important facts to begin with up front: 1.) Set your margins and gutters at the beginning.In a custom document, a 6x9 in Publisher, every single page must have the margins and gutters set individually. 2) Always view your document in a two page spread, even in MS Word. The beginnings of chapters or stories starts on a right hand page about midway down the page (4.5 inches). 3) In MS Publisher, you have to create a text box before you can insert text. This is fairly simple- there is a "draw text box" button on the ribbon. 4.) Make sure the correct font size is set from the beginning! Depending on your age group, 11 pt is about average for a text book with some illustrations. Fonts of 12 and higher are pretty elementary- the younger the reader, the higher the font size generally. 5) Use the rulers feature in MS Publisher to measure your text boxes and graphics so they are evenly centered on the page. 6) Learn how to create "sections" in Publisher to divide the book accordint to the front matter, which frequently does not have page numbers, the forword and introduction, which frequently have Roman numerals, and the main body of text, which has regular numbers. 7)Most on-line printers print in batches of four page sections, so your total page count must be divisible by four. 8)The graphics must be 300 dpi or higher, inserted into your document as JPEG or GIF, and then converted into PDF format which will be done automatically when you save your final document as a PDF. It is not at all unusual to take one of your favorite books off the bookshelf and imitate the formatting- how many blank pages up front, how many title pages, where the copyright page goes, etc. And, as I have mentioned before, creating a cover is not that difficult with a MS Publisher 2010 catalog template, and I'll discuss creating your cover soon.