Lulu book publishing...

[Boggert]

Anyone know anything about this site?

I have 2 books to publish and someone has suggested this site.

http://www.lulu.com/browse/homepage.php

It appears ok, but I'm no expert.

[smo]

Seems like an intresting concept although i'm not in any way knowledgable on it!

Out of interest what are the books?

[Mudlark]

I know nothing about the site apart from what I can see there

I assume you have read up on publishing houses etc. and know what pitfalls there may be

If it's any recommendation I've bookmark the page for my own possible use at a later date  :lol:  :lol:


Just read everything on the site and be wary is all I can say, try one publication first and see how it goes is all I can say at the moment

[bezzabsa]

some nice free music too ;)

[strapping young lad]

i recently read a book about a bloke who cycled around the world, and it was published by someone ... (i mean it was someone independent and someone who i think you are looking for)

ang on

www.alastairhumphreys.com is the site and i bought it from amazon.. but i cant find the book nor the link to the publisher sorry :(

[Boggert]

Well there are 2 books, the first is a kids story I wrote when I was a child.

The next is a jargon free advice book on how to buy and sell your first property. I use to be a surveyor and when dealing with First time buyers the never had a clue about it, so its just explains the processes in basic english.

There is a third but it is not finished a novel... :lol:

[smo]

Have you tried the traditional approach to getting them published. Altho lulu seems good i can see the market being small for them, i for one have never herd of them and would be unlikely to find them whilst searching for a book.

[thermidorthelobster]

I've published on Lulu and it is pretty good.  It's free to publish;  you just upload PDFs (or Word documents I think) of your formatted book, plus a cover page, and choose the options you want for reproducing it (paperback, hardback, size etc).  At this stage they don't print it;  it's just held on their server.

Your book then appears on the Lulu online shop, just like Amazon, and people can buy it online as a PDF or hard copy.  If they purchase hard copy, Lulu print the book to order and ship it to them from the US.  The purchaser pays the printing costs as part and parcel of the cost of the book, and if you want to make some money, you can load on a royalty which goes to you, on both the book and the PDF.

The hardest thing I've found is working out what size to format the PDFs to, in order to fit the book format you've chosen.  It's in the Help somewhere but it's not obvious.

It's a great system if (a) you can't / don't want to find a publisher;  (b) don't mind marketing the book yourself;  (c) don't want to publish yourself and have to put in cash up-front and end up with a garage full of unsold books.

My book was a 250 page hardback book in full colour, and including postage works out at about £30 per copy.  This compares very favourably with getting it done at a repro house.  To have the same sized book as a B&W paperback would be a fraction of the cost.

[Boggert]

I've published on Lulu and it is pretty good.  It's free to publish;  you just upload PDFs (or Word documents I think) of your formatted book, plus a cover page, and choose the options you want for reproducing it (paperback, hardback, size etc).  At this stage they don't print it;  it's just held on their server.

Your book then appears on the Lulu online shop, just like Amazon, and people can buy it online as a PDF or hard copy.  If they purchase hard copy, Lulu print the book to order and ship it to them from the US.  The purchaser pays the printing costs as part and parcel of the cost of the book, and if you want to make some money, you can load on a royalty which goes to you, on both the book and the PDF.

The hardest thing I've found is working out what size to format the PDFs to, in order to fit the book format you've chosen.  It's in the Help somewhere but it's not obvious.

It's a great system if (a) you can't / don't want to find a publisher;  (b) don't mind marketing the book yourself;  (c) don't want to publish yourself and have to put in cash up-front and end up with a garage full of unsold books.

My book was a 250 page hardback book in full colour, and including postage works out at about £30 per copy.  This compares very favourably with getting it done at a repro house.  To have the same sized book as a B&W paperback would be a fraction of the cost.

Cheers matey...
Did you sell any?
I will probably give it a go...

[thermidorthelobster]

Oddly enough, I didn't publish it in order to sell any...  I published it so I could get some copies myself, because it was cheaper than a repro house, and much better results!

As it happens, I have sold one copy, to a Mud-Clubber :)  And I've had a few downloads, although I left them as FOC, because I wasn't bothered about making any money out of it.

http://www.lulu.com/content/546819

I'm in the middle of reformatting it as a paperback;  again, mainly for my own purposes, but if anybody wants to buy it, that's fine by me.

[Boggert]

Well thought I would give it a go...

http://www.lulu.com/content/651863

Oh yes, thats not my real name! lol  :lol: