Want to be published by Penguin, the historic press which is home to authors including Roald Dahl, Beatrix Potter and Kathryn Stockett? Now you can be – and for as little as $99 (£60), as Penguin's American arm announced a move into self-publishing.

Penguin USA will provide the service through its genre-fiction online community, Book Country, which launched in May offering wannabe authors the opportunity to post their work online and receive feedback. With 500 works of romance, science fiction, fantasy, mystery and thriller now online from 4,000 members, and "a small number" of those members having secured literary agents, Penguin has decided to provide "a direct path to publication for those who choose to go the self-publishing route".

"A growing number of authors simply want to go directly to readers with their books. We respect that new reality and the changed landscape that technology has brought to book publishing," said Molly Barton, president of Book Country and Penguin's global digital director. "Self publishing is a trend that isn't going away." Penguin's announcement follows the news last week that Amanda Hocking had become the second self-published writer to sell over 1m ebooks on the Amazon Kindle, after John Locke.

Costing between $99 and $549, depending on whether the writer wants to format their ebook themselves or plump for a "professional print and ebook" option, the Book Country self-publishing option will give writers 70% of the sale price of a book priced above $2.99, and 30% of a book priced between 99c and $2.95.

Penguin chief executive David Shanks said the service was part of Penguin's commitment to maintain "its leadership position" in digital publishing. "That includes offering self-publishing services that are consistent with our overall strategy of connecting a broad variety of writers to the reading public," he said. "With its focus on nurturing and supporting new voices, Book Country is the perfect vehicle for introducing a new kind of self-publishing that offers a more professional product and provides guidance that isn't currently available from other players."

Although Penguin said it was the first of the "big six" publishers to move into self-publishing, HarperCollins, through its Authonomy online writing community, does point writers towards Amazon's self-publishing platform, CreateSpace.

Shanks told the Wall Street Journal that Penguin could offer the most successful self-published authors a contract, but Barton was adamant that authors who failed to pick up a contract with Penguin would not be directed towards the publisher's new self-publishing arm. "It wouldn't be appropriate" to "suggest a path that involves fees" to a rejected writer, she said.

Harry Bingham, a bestselling UK author who also runs editorial consultancy The Writers' Workshop, raised concerns about a traditional publisher dabbling in self-publishing. "I think it's dubious," he said. "I don't have an issue with self-publishing, but I do think that the big traditional publishers are about editorial excellence, and as soon as you start to blur the boundaries and suggest it is all a question of marketing, you are in a way denigrating what your company stands for."

But Bingham, who works with would-be writers every day through The Writers' Workshop, expects other mainstream publishers to announce similar projects in the near future. "The issue for me is how do you as a publisher be really clear about the importance of editorial standards on one hand in your main business, and on the other hand say 'you can do it, have a go, it's fine'?" he asked. "It'd not quite clear how they will make that separation and serve both communities. One of those offerings is going to somewhat contradict the other."

Popular titles on Book Country currently include the romance Rescue Me, in which "a country girl in the big city gets involved with a sexy Latin city boy when she agrees to help with a pair of abused horses", the science fiction novel Pathfinder, Lost ("the galaxy is huge. It's a bad place in which to lose your way. The human heart is just a small and fragile thing – but it's a far worse place to be lost in") and the fantasy The Forces of Heaven and Hell Alike, in which "Liam enjoyed being a demon, gathering souls and feeding his coffee addiction. But with a risky love life and an archangel out to get him, life wasn't perfect."