My first foray into self-publishing was circa 1978.  

Big problem. In 1978 I was a kid. 

No one was really interested in publishing me and although my parents were supportive they did not really know how to help me.   My first work was called "A Guide to Self-Image & Looking Good." Interestingly, I recently re-read it and it was remarkably erudite for something kid written. 

In any event, I was hot on publishing my work and selling it via mail order. After much calling and searching, I ended up having a local printer typeset it (the old fashioned way) and print it as a small booklet.   But it cost me a fortune, about $250 of my own money,  made doing odd jobs. 

The booklets finally came back from the printer. The first time I saw them I became intoxicated with a sense of accomplishment.  

I was twelve, published and hooked. 

Since that day, I have self-published a bunch of works (not all books) and there is one thing for sure:

The number of self publishing resources continues to grow and today it is much easier to learn how to self publish your own book than it ever was in the past. Here are three self publishing resources that really made my life easier as an author/ publisher. I hope you find them helpful, too.

• The ability to quickly and inexpensively make .pdf formatted documents.   Typically, most print on demand publishers want and print from .pdf formatted documents. If you can't afford the Adobe Acrobat software there are other very inexpensive solutions.   I use BCL's Easy Pdf driver. For under $20 this software will install as a plugin to MS Word and allow you to "print" your documents to .pdf format.   There are other solutions out there but I really like this one because it will also preserve hyperlinks within your text in case you are self publishing your own e-book.  
• Another huge boon to self publishers is the ability to add cheap royalty free stock photos.   At some of these sites it's possible to get some really good graphics and photos for under $2 per image.  And as you probably already know the right graphics can really give your book a professional appearance. My favorite stock photo site is PowerPointPix.com because the smallest 900x900 pixel size photo (appropriate for most self publishing purposes) can be purchased for as little as a buck an image. 
• One other self publishing resource I wanted to tell you about may not at first seem like a tool for self publishers. It's a simple egg timer.  I get so much more done and can consequently crank out more products when I set a time certain in which I want the task completed. For instance, I set the timer for 45-minutes for the creation of this article.   There is really great free timer I use called Cool Timer. Download it over at cnet.com.