THE internet is blamed for all kinds of modern ills, from childhood obesity to the promotion of terrorism. But Lynda Gallilee believes that it has transformed her life.
In September last year, the 56-year-old saw her autobiography in print and became one of the country's growing band of self-publishers.
"The internet was where I turned for advice," says Lynda, whose book Speaking for Myself was printed by Redcar-based printer Redpress.
"Through different websites I found out what I needed to know about ISBN numbers, distribution and everything else. I don't think I could have done the book without it."
For Lynda, who has cerebral palsy, which affects the right-hand side of her body, her balance and her speech, the internet has also become a vital promotional tool for her 117-page book, preferring to email literary magazines and radio stations in order to sell as many copies of her book to the widest possible audience.
This is not for financial gain, she says, but to tell people that having a physical disability can be approached with humour, hope and faith.
"I have to have a voice, a clear voice, and sadly that is one of the things I will never possess.
"This is why email – and my book – are so important," she says.
Scores of publishers rejected the book "although they sent very nice letters", but Lynda, from Middlesbrough, was undeterred.
Speaking for Myself covers the first 21 years of her life, and chronicles not only her medical condition, but the trials and tribulations of a typical young girl growing up in the 1960s.
Now a proud grandmother, it was her husband of 35-years, John who paid the £1,200 for the original Speaking for Myself print run of 200, which sold out almost immediately to family and friends.
Another 500 copies have all gone too, and Lynda is now hoping that a publisher will take on her book and reprint it again, taking on the responsibility of marketing it to a larger audience. Nationwide? "No, worldwide!", she laughs, and then her voice becomes more serious; "I've done this for the parents of others who might be born with disabilities, and for those who live with a disability. Even though I haven't trekked across any deserts or scaled any mountains I still believe that my story is a story that is just aching to be told."
If the 46,000 manuscripts submitted to Channel Four's Richard and Judy show's writing competition last year are anything to go by, Lynda is certainly not alone in her desire to "tell her story".
The competition was won by Yorkshire-born Christine Aziz, who bagged a £50,000 publishing deal with Pan Macmillan for her futuristic novel The Olive Readers, 46,000 manuscripts is a colossal response – and that's just from those with a passing acquaintance with Richard and Judy. And that's only novels, not autobiographies, or local histories or learned treatises on the mating habits of the grey squirrel.
One literary magazine estimates that half the UK population is planning some kind of personal writing project. And all this in a climate where fewer books are published and distributed every year. Big publishing houses can't afford to take risks, small independent bookshops are becoming rarer and large retailers such as Waterstones only want to promote sure-fire bestsellers on their shelves.
No wonder self-publishing – not to be confused with vanity publishing, which is when a company charges an author a fee for publishing their book – is thriving. It's not a new idea, of course. Virginia Woolf was so desperate to get into print that she set up her own publishing company, the Hogarth Press, in 1917, and went on to publish TS Eliot and Sigmund Freud as well as her own books. Roddy Doyle and Mark Twain are two other famous self-publishers.
Writers self-publish for a variety of reasons; to find a wider audience for their work; to fulfil an ambition (such as the publication of a life story); to share a project, perhaps a family history; to publish for a niche or academic market; and of course, in the hope that they might by "spotted" by a major publisher.
It does happen. Look at GP Taylor, author of the children's novel Shadowmancer, which was bought by Faber in 2003. He now has a £3.5m six-book deal, and a film deal worth millions. The American rights to Shadowmancer were sold for £314,000, rumoured to be more than three times JK Rowling's cheque for the American publication of the first Harry Potter story.
Taylor, was a 43-year old vicar in Cloughton, North Yorkshire. He was advised that no publisher would touch his tale of good and evil set on the North-East coast in the 18th-century. So he sold his motorbike and published Shadowmancer himself for £3,500.
After selling 2,500 copies in a month, largely through word-of-mouth, he was recommended to the agent who signed JK Rowling to Bloomsbury. The rest is a self-publishing dream come true.
"Self-publishing has come a long way in the last five years or so," says Jeremy Thompson, at Troubador Publishing.
"Once seen suspiciously as another form of vanity publishing, it is now increasingly viewed as a respectable way for authors to get a foot on the publishing ladder. "
In November, Troubador are launching Readers' Review, a new magazine dedicated to reviewing self-published books, by individual authors or by companies providing self-publishing services for authors.
Troubador also operates an imprint called Matador, which provides a publishing service.
This offers custom-made help with proof-reading, editing, printing, distribution, marketing etc, depending on how much direction an individual actually requests. And naturally, it can advise on how to get your precious work sold via internet outlets such as Amazon and the WH Smith Internet Bookshop.
As Lynda would testify, exposure via the internet can make or break a self-published book. This year has seen an explosion in sites which, like Matador, promise to help self-publishers achieve success. BookSurge (www.booksurge.com) for instance, an offshoot of Amazon, and Macmillan's New Writing Scheme (www.panmacmillan.
com), which has attracted controversy because it publishes its chosen writers for free, but offers no advance or editorial support. Critics say that Macmillan gets more out of the arrangement than the authors, in that it raises the market profile of the publishing company without the bother of them having to pay out large advance cheques.
Perhaps the most colourful and innovative site is www.lulu.com. Set up by Bob Young, a Canadian IT entrepreneur, this will produce even one copy of your book, if that's all you want. You simply log on, join up, submit your text, choose a layout and hit "price and publish". If required, www.lulu.com will then automatically handle sales and distribution (the site takes a 20 per cent cut of profits). There are 30,000 books already registered, and about 1,000 new titles are added each month.
Just one question though. With this kind of volume indicative of the amount of self-published material out there, and no editorial control or even advice, isn't much of it, well, not to put too fine a point on it, rubbish? "There is no question that there is an awful lot of crap on the site," admits Mr Young. "But surely it should be the job of readers and not a handful of publishers to decide what is and isn't crap?" The ramifications of the answers to that question are up there with those that followed Caxton's mastery of the printing press.