This paper reports an empirical exploration of authors who act as publishers for their own books. It is part of a larger effort by a research team at the School of Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona, whose agenda is to study the shifting boundaries book of authorship, publishing, discovery, audience, and roles of libraries in an i-society. In addition to the three team members cited as authors, there are other members who participated in data gathering, acknowledged at the end of the paper, and still others not directly involved in this study but who are or will be working on related projects. We consider the issue of shifting boundaries of book authorship, publishing, discovery, audience, and relevance to libraries as one of the major emerging themes in the iSociety, and one which is sometimes ignored in the face of newer, and also interesting, genres of publishing, such as blogs, ezines and websites for sharing authored materials. It is possible that the team will extend its interest to these genres, at some point, but for now we are focused on understanding these shifting boundaries in relation to the genre we know of as a book, and the changing patterns for its creation, production and movement in society
