Writer/observer,
Thanks for the clarification. If you feel your bio will appeal to a wide, even though narrow audience, I strongly recommend you submit to commercial publishing houses--at the very least, try university presses. In fact, exhaust the commercial houses before lulu. Get a copy of 2007 Writers Market and start studying it.
The thing is this: if you print through lulu (notice I say "print," not "publish"), Authorhouse, or even heaven help you, publishamerica, an agent will not sit up and take notice. Anyone can print anything through lulu. It means nothing as a publishing credit.
If you have a commercially viable book that people interested in military history are going to want to read, and you go through lulu.com, the only people who will read it are those you tell about it. Bookstores will not automatically carry it unless you place it there yourself. The only way to reach a large audience is through bookstore placement. The way to get this is to get it commercially published.
OTOH, you can also self publish. That is, design and lay out the entire book yourself and have it printed through you local print shop. You pay for all of it, you distribute it, you call all bookstores trying to get them to carry it, you drive all over town promoting it; in short, you do all the work. It works for some very successfully. But it literally becomes your full time job.
And I'm not talking out of my a$$ when I tell you all this, I had my narrow-audience first book published by a commercial publisher. Three years later, it still sells well. So do books two and three.
allen
