The revolution will not after all be televised, it will be published. I know this first-hand because last week I left the world of humble authorship and joined the grand ranks of publisher.

Two weeks after I completed my manuscript — that’s right, two weeks — the postman delivered my new book. It arrived courtesy of the American website Lulu.com, via a printer in Spain, and within half an hour I had it on sale worldwide through my personal online “store front”. If anybody wants to buy a copy, Lulu will print one — just the one — post it within a week and send me 80% of the profit.

Holding the finished product — a proper, perfect-bound book, gleaming colour cover hugging 76 crisp white pages of text — it was obvious that a revolution is under way for prospective authors everywhere. On the day my book arrived, a friend mentioned he had just received his proof copy of a new collection of essays, to be published this autumn. When did you deliver the manuscript? I asked. “Last summer,” he replied, “the publishers have been working on it ever since.”

Whatever it is that publishers do all year long, their mystique is about to be dispelled. Lulu.com and a handful of other “print-on-demand” pioneers are threatening to do for the publishing industry what the digital download has done for the music business. That’s because Lulu is effectively the iTunes of publishing, putting the author and his “content” in direct reach of the reader, bypassing an entire industry of agents and editors, proof readers and designers.

So, as I’m on the cusp of the revolution, let me explain how it works. First you commission your book from yourself. The one you’ve always wanted to write, perhaps, or the one that you know deserves an audience but has thus far received only myriad rejection letters. Then you sign up — for free — with Lulu who walk you, step by step, through the publishing process.

You need a title, back-cover “blurb” and a cover image. My book of hybrid poem-prayers is called The Sky’s Window, based on a line about prayer from the Welsh poet RS Thomas. I got in touch with a local artist — a painter actually, well, my wife to be precise — and asked her if she had any ideas. She came up with a detail from a recent painting which was just the job, and we agreed terms relatively quickly.

Depending on manuscript length and your chosen typeface, you select your book size, number of pages, hardcover or paperback, perfect-bound or saddle-stitch . . . and in no time you are uploading manuscript and cover from your desk to the Lulu server. Still not quite believing yourself, you review it online, press “publish”, order your copy and wait a few days. If it’s not right when it arrives, you’ve only paid for one copy. You can publish your revised second edition before going public.

The cost is as revolutionary as the process — transparent, elementary and loaded in favour of the author. You pay twice: first for the manufacture and second against your royalty. My 76-page 9in by 6in paperback costs me £3.38 to manufacture, taking it to nearly £5 with postage. If I put it on sale on my Lulu “store front” at £10, Lulu keeps £1 (20%) of that £5 royalty. The other £4 it puts in my bank account with every sale.

Now it’s true that within the existing publishing paradigm, authors have other benefits — an advance perhaps, the services of an editor, marketing resources. But authors pay big-time for this, which explains why they might receive £1 of the sale price of a £10 book, not £4. Publishers will point out that they take a huge punt with an author, outlaying a small fortune on the print run and warehouse space in the faint hope that you are the next Douglas Copeland.

But what they aren’t telling us is that a print revolution is driving a publishing revolution: it’s called print-on-demand and it means Lulu can print a copy of my book only when someone orders it. With print-on-demand the printer produces hard copies of a book from a digital file — the file Lulu sends it when it receives an order. A copy is printed and put in the post.

When I sold my first copy last week I rocketed into the top 5,000 on the Lulu bestsellers chart . . . at number 4,984. I have no illusions, my idiosyncratic “meditations” were always destined for a “cult” audience, but at least now they will have one. And I’d guess many Lulu authors have sold dozens rather than thousands of books. But the maths of publishing is changing. Profitability has been factored around millions of sales by hundreds of authors; in future it may be based around hundreds of sales by millions of authors.

The internet’s relentless progress in democratising commerce and art, levelling the field for all-comers, will distress the literary purist by making quality control history. But publishers will doubtless exploit Lulu and similar sites to scout for their own future bestsellers. And if it means that a lot of dross will be published, well ’twas ever thus.

From here on, the audience gets to decide whether a book is viable or not, whether it should get a readership or vanish into obscurity. This is a publishing upheaval that could rank right up there with Tyndale taking advantage of the new medium of print 500 years ago. He put the good book in the hands of the readers. Lulu is putting the book in the hands of the writer.