The recent onset of digital printing has begun to change the philosophy of publishing. Previously, publishing a book was only cost effective if numerous copies were sold. However, because of its constant pricing, digital printing enables a book to be printed and bound on demand for an affordable price at short runs. Coupled with the World Wide Web's ability to reach wide audiences and easily receive and parse content, publishing your own book cost effectively and quickly is no longer fiction.

North Carolina based Lulu.com and numerous other corporations are harnessing the average person's desire to be published with the technology of digitally printing books on demand as well as maintaining customer communication through the Internet. Unfortunately, if the customer wants to control the layout of the publication, they must use pagination software on their own machine and export their work to Portable Document Format (PDF) or hire a professional. The average user lacks the knowledge to create or layout their book with pagination software and the sites that offer publishing services currently do not offer many effective solutions.

This project is an attempt to use XML, XSLT, XSL-FO and other existing technology to create an automated web application for book publishing that facilitate the layout process for self-published books on demand.