FastPencil: I didn't actually end up printing a book through FastPencil. They have a text editor, which I didn't use as I'd written my book through Word. Uploading from Word proved difficult, however, as I had to convert it to a very specific pdf file format that I had to get Adobe Reader to make. I had to, in addition, fill out more information for FastPencil than any of the others--a long summary and short summary, author info, etc. After finally uploading, however, and choosing a cover, I discovered that I had to pay about 20 dollars to publish privately (in contrast to several hundred for the full publishing package). On a budget of about five dollars a book (shipping), that was too much, and moreover, the discount didn't apply to the entire cost of the book, so I gave up and cried (not actually).
CreateSpace: Of all of these, CreateSpace was the most bureaucratic. I had to choose an ISBN and copyright and set up an account to receive royalties. There was no option to publish privately. After uploading the file, there was a tool so that I could see the margins and they warned me about things like my first page not starting on an odd number and forced me to change my margins so that I could see all the words (my margins were tiny). After confirming that I wanted to use this file, I waited a day while they checked that it was printable. They gave me two free copies, unlike the other companies, which was nice, however, I found the process unnecessarily difficult. Shipping took three or four days (I don't remember exactly). When I received the books, my first impression was that they looked and felt like bricks, which was mostly because the paper was thick.
BookBaby: It was hard to figure out how to use BookBaby initially because it was slow and my book very long--too long, in fact. I chose from multiple templates to select things such as margins and then uploaded my file, which was displayed in a text editor underneath a wysiwyg view of the book. After understanding that I had to change my font size through their text editor, I finally managed to change the font to Garamond and reduce the font size until my book met the required length of 450 pages. When I discovered errors, it took a very long time to change them because it took so long to load. Finally, I was ready to publish my book. However, I nearly published it as full color because that was the default option and spent time figuring out how to change that. The nice thing about BookBaby was that it allowed me to publish it privately in hardcover, softcover, and ebook form and gave me a copy of the ebook as well. I was not very satisfied with the book; the font didn't look the same as it had on the screen and seemed sloppy. The ebook, however, turned out very well and was easy to download and took no effort.
Lulu.com: Lulu was by far my favorite publisher. Unlike the others, they offered free hardcover books, though as I've printed a paperback and the others were all paperback, I will use that one as comparison. I chose to publish this book privately. Uploading my file was relatively quick and easy--I just had to select my file and it only took a minute or so. Then I designed my cover using their cover wizard, which had templates to choose from (it also allowed me to upload a cover of my own). It produced print-ready files for both for me to view, and after looking through both, I ordered a proof copy. Unlike the others, Lulu uses UPS Innovations, and my book was delivered in less than two days after it was done printing (all of them were print-on-demand). Though I used tiny margins in the file I uploaded, Lulu somehow adjusted my margins without changing the page count (I still don't know how), because all the text was readable. The font (also Garamond) looked mostly like what had been on the screen. All in all, Lulu was fast and flexible, so I would recommend it.
Side notes from this experience: Garamond is a very nice font for books. Don't use Times New Roman. Choose a black text on cream paper over black on white when possible.
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