Self-Publishing at very reasonable rates

[devonin]

So I was reading this article which was talking about a book exchange site I frequent, and one of the other websites they were talking about seemed like something I should bring up in here.

Quoted from their article:

Lulu

Lulu is a DIY publishing house. You write your book, upload it to the site, choose your cover, fonts and binding. Hey, presto! You're a published author. With no editors, Lulu has tiny overheads. Bob Young, Lulu's founder, says, "In traditional publishing, selling less than 20,000 copies isn't profitable. We thought there had to be a way to create a publishing opportunity for speciality authors who would only sell a few thousand copies a year."

Hence Lulu publishes anything, technology textbooks to "the world's largest collection of bad poetry". Lulu has produced more than half a million titles, and there are more than 100 writers on the Lulu roster making a full-time living from the royalties. Lulu's bestseller, with 70,000 copies sold, is a how-to book for cancer patients facing chemotherapy called Putting the "Can" in Cancer.

Lulu's website has a recommendations system much like Amazon's. "On Lulu, you might find the only book ever published on the planet on a given subject," says Young, "because we make money, and the author makes money, on a single copy of a book."

www.lulu.com

Doing some fiddling with their pricing system, it seems like you can get a novel-sized, perfect-bound, black-and-white paperback printed for as little as $5.17 for a 32 page book, and $19.33 for a 750 page book, with per-unit discounts on bulk ordering.

Seems like a 200 page novel would run about 7 bucks, and once it's uploaded, you can order as many copies as you like, at any time, and then "distrubute through 60,000 retailers, schools and libraries"

[Zythus]

Its a good solution to the population of preliminary writers that needs a test to the world of publishing.

[All_That_Chaz]

That's pretty neat!

If I ever finish the play I've been working on since... 2001... I'll definitely put in a book with some of my favorite poems. Maybe I'll even throw some of the research papers I'm proud of in there. Seems worth $5.17 to me.

[Tokzic]

I just started writing a novel. Excellent timing, dev. <3

[Verruckter]

Not a good idea. What will happen when all your books are to be copy pasted and posted freely on the internet? No one will want to buy them anymore. They'll just have to download them from any non-paying website, torrent or filesharing software. Copyrights will be void and you won't be making any profit.

[All_That_Chaz]

Originally Posted by Verruckter

Not a good idea. What will happen when all your books are to be copy pasted and posted freely on the internet? No one will want to buy them anymore. They'll just have to download them from any non-paying website, torrent or filesharing software. Copyrights will be void and you won't be making any profit.

Profit wasn't really the motivating factor for me. It was more pride than anything - to hold a book and inside it being your own stuff. I think that's pretty cool.

And you're wrong about making a profit. As long as any sell, it's going to make a profit. Since printing the book costs next to nothing, and there's just about no overhead at lulu, just about all revenue comes back as profit immediately.

[GamerShadow]

Definitely looking into this for FFR: The Phantom Challenge when I finish the rough draft(What I am posting here in the forums.) and edit+revise. This is a pretty sweet find, devonin.

[devonin]

Originally Posted by Verruckter

Not a good idea. What will happen when all your books are to be copy pasted and posted freely on the internet? No one will want to buy them anymore. They'll just have to download them from any non-paying website, torrent or filesharing software. Copyrights will be void and you won't be making any profit.

Um... you seem to miss the point of this company. They're an actual publisher, like they make hard-copy books. This isn't a case of "You upload your work here and people pay for a download" They actually produce solid books for sale and shipment.

You have them print up 100 copies, and "100 copies of the book" go up onto the website, and when someone wants to buy it, a physical book is shipped to them.

[MixMasterLar]

Book-freaking-marked. time to get back to that Si-Fi thing I was writing about.

[MalReynolds]

Go ahead. You can get your stuff stolen and distrubted, though. And it would be legal, as they're really shady when it comes to copyrighting things. I've heard reports of things being copylefted - a process where outside agencies are allowed to take, copy or change your work without your permission because Lulu isn't covered entirely by the CCL.

That is, if you want your book to appear in stores. Not really the best thing to have someone pick up your book at a Barnes and Noble and own the entire work, right down the ability to re-write it as they see fit and send it in for actual publication.

[All_That_Chaz]

Oh so all they do is fancy printing? Lame. I thought it came with copyright protection.

[MalReynolds]

It does, when they ship from their website. But once it hits stores, it gets touchy.

[All_That_Chaz]

Good thing I'm not a writer by trade. =/

[devonin]

When you post Content on Lulu's website, you keep your copyright, but you grant that Lulu will provide a service to post, display, copy, and sell that Content within the limitations you set during the online publishing process.

That sounds perfectly reasonable to me, they are after all a marketing tool as well as a publisher. I'm not seeing where the "shady" side of this comes in. You can use the site as deeply or shallowly as you want. You can put works there in such a way that only you can access them in -any- way, get only as many copies made as -you- want. Or you can have them listed in any place -you- feel comfortable having them listed (Say by having taken the time to actually read the User Agreement) it isn't like once your content touches their website they can just run away with it.

[MalReynolds]

Right. But when YOU opt to have the book shipped to stores YOU opt out of CCL. That's a huge criticism that was levelled against them.

It's completley safe on their website and when they ship directly from their website. It's when the book hits shelves that things get tricky - and yes, the book hitting the shelf is something you have to specify, so it does fall under that umbrella of "limitations you set".