Having a publisher close its doors can signify a few things for the authors on its payroll. It could mean that the books they were writing will never see the light of day, or that they'll just have to pursue an alternative route to getting their words out to the world.

Milwaukee author Diane Lau -- who writes romance fiction under the pen name Diana Laurence -- not only had one publisher shut down on her, but two.

"Although I was tempted to feel some sort of "author's curse" had been put upon me, it's actually the nature of the publishing business that small publishers spring up and close at a very high rate," Lau says.

After her first publisher closed in 1998, Lau says she decided to print some of her books herself. She founded Living Beyond Reality Press, selling her books via the Internet. Her next publisher closed its doors in February of this year.

"My Florida-based publisher was about to release my fourth title when it shut its doors," she says. "I had been the company's best-selling author, so my publisher urged me to expand LBR Press and publish my own books. I'd had two years to make a name for myself and knew my books had a waiting readership, so it was a much easier decision in 2006 than in 1998."

Better technology made the decision easier in 2006, as well.

"The technology today is amazing. There is a growing market for e-books and they are very inexpensive and simple to produce if you know how," Lau says. "Meanwhile, the advent of print-on-demand publishing means you can produce 'New York publisher' quality print books in quantities as few as one at a time, which means low start-up cost."

However, Lau says that there are pros and cons on either side of the decision to publish via the Internet.

"The technology is all there to make it possible and affordable, but it isn't the answer for everyone. You need a certain skill set beyond writing ability, and you need to know the required software."

However, Lau says her experience, although daunting, was still fun. For those authors that aren't ready to undertake this kind of task, she has a bit of advice.

"I advise authors to let go of their traditional ideas of sending a manuscript to Random House and becoming the next Stephen King or Nora Roberts," Lau says. "Check out the opportunities available via the Internet and consider your options."

She says the course she has taken won't take her automatically to the New York Times Bestseller List, but she has gotten plenty of readers and recognition, which has given her the opportunity to appear at the Romantic Times' nation convention next month.

"That beats having a book sit for a couple years in some editor's slush pile only to be rejected. It's truly amazing what you can achieve nowadays with the technology available if you're determined, creative and willing to put in the effort."

With Living Beyond Reality Press Lau has released five ebooks and four paperbacks and now she is moving into another area: Trading cards.

"Diana's Deck is my set of 48 trading cards, which I designed and illustrated, featuring the characters from my stories. I used to collect trading cards, and after having done portraits of all my characters for my Web site, it occurred to me that I had enough to make a pretty cool set of cards," she says. "It was a unique idea, so I thought, why not give it a try? The characters represent various concepts related to love and romance, so I designed the cards to work as romance fortune-telling cards, in sort of a Tarot-type manner."

Although the trading cards will be available exclusively on Living Beyond Reality, Lau's other works are also available at other online book stores like Barnes and Noble, Powells Books and Amazon.com.

"It took me awhile to realize that online bookstores are where it's at these days, but it's true," Lau says. "It's a much more economical and efficient way to sell books than brick and mortar stores, and the marketplace is much larger."

Living Beyond Reality Press' web site is livingbeyondreality.com. Diane's Web site is dianalaurence.com.