great choice for those that can do-it-yourself
Written: Mar 08 '07
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I started publishing with Lulu in 2004, when I decided to launch my own company. Lulu is not a publisher, but a print technology provider. What this means is that Lulu provides authors with the tools to produce their own books, but does not perform any of the actual functions of a publisher for you. This is, of course, both a blessing and a curse, depending on how deftly you can manipulate software and how much you know about the publishing industry.
Lulu is sometimes grouped in with “vanity” publishers, however it is not. A Vanity publisher normally handles all aspects of the actual publishing process, but hands the author a bill for everything or requires a minimum purchase. Such companies tend to position themselves as “legitimate” publishers, and feed on the ignorance of aspiring writers that want to get their books in print. Lulu, however, makes no such claims, and simply provides a set of services that allows you to produce your own books without having to go to several different printers and agencies to do so.
So what services does Lulu actually offer? Lulu uses print-on-demand technology to digitally send files to various print partners, who can produce books as they are ordered. Signing up as a publisher with Lulu is free. Once signed up, you can upload your document for free and make it available for sale. U.S. customer files are sent to the U.S. print partners. European customers are sent to European printers. The company is also seeking out other print partners in other regions as well.
Little actual technical know-how is required. If you can format a WORD document, you can publish. The Lulu process will automatically convert your WORD document into a print-ready PDF for you. The site even offers a wide variety of open source cover illustrations for those without the techno-savvy to design their own covers. More techie-type members can upload their own PDFs and cover art as well.
Lulu offers both softcover and hardcover formats in a variety of sizes, as well as color printing. Unfortunately, the process is such that even if you only have three or four color pages in your document, you will have to pay the color rate for the entire book. This can inflate the price of your book drastically. Besides books, the service also allows you to create CDs, DVDs, and calendars.
However, Lulu does not provide proofreading, editing, or design services. So while you can upload your document for free and covert it to a PDF, that doesn’t mean the PDF will be a polished product. If you are serious about producing a quality book, you will need to make your own arrangements to have the document proofread and edited. Fortunately, Lulu has an active online community, and many experienced members offer these services and others (sometimes for free or a small fee). Lulu does not endorse any of these services, so it is buyer beware. But again, the nature of the community is such that other members will often quickly chime in to help you make a decision regarding potential service providers.
All members (called creators in the general lingo of the site) are given free storefronts. The storefronts have some limited customization, so that members can add custom banners, links, and graphics to spruce up their sites. As an example, I have included a link to my own storefront http://www.lulu.com/bardsandsages. You can also enable messages so that customers can contact you via the site, as opposed to having to give our your own e-mail address. Authors are also given blogs, and can either add their blogs to their storefronts or maintain them separately for personal use. And again, this is part of their free service.
Lulu does not actively promote storefronts (as it is simply providing the service, not the marketing). Creators will need to do their own promotion to sell books via the storefront. Lulu handles all transactions on the site and makes the arrangements to have books printed and shipped. When a sale occurs, Lulu processes the order and takes a 20% cut as a commission. The balance of the money is deposited into the creator’s account. Creators can have their money sent to them either via check or paypal.
Because the creator keeps all rights to the works, creators are free to sell their products on other sites as well as Lulu. For example, I sell digital versions of all of my products at RPGNOW and Drivethrurpg, and make the print versions available at Lulu.
A point of contention among many creators is the rating system used by Lulu. All books must be rated by the author based on their content. This insures that customers browsing the site can find the types of books they are looking for. The rating system is Children, Everyone, Teen, Mature. This vary narrowly defined system doesn’t match up with anything used in normal publishing, and causes confusion. Books rated mature do not appear in general searches of the Lulu site, nor do they appear on storefronts, unless the viewer is logged in to his or her account AND has specifically set his or her setting to view Mature content. This makes marketing of books difficult, as it requires potential customers to create a Lulu account and sign in before they can even review the potential purchase. And creators with non-mature content who use the Teen or Everyone rating often find their books lumped in with young adult titles later, as sometimes these ratings affect how the books are listed on retail sites via distribution (discussed in more detail below).
While the benefit of POD technology is that there is no minimum order quantity, individual books can be pricey. Printing one 6” x 9” perfect bound 200 pg book has a manufacturing cost of $8.53 (this is the price creators can buy their products for). In order to keep retail prices competitive, creators must often be willing to deal with profits of only $1-$2 per book. In this example, setting the retail price at $11.99 would leave a profit of $3.46. Of that, Lulu takes a 0.69 commission. So the author would make a final profit of $2.77 on a sale. There are discounts for volume pricing, so the price per book goes down when you buy in bulk. The following link will allow you to see other price structures. http://www.lulu.com/includes/calc_book_inc.php
Lulu also offers a distribution service that allows authors to get their books listed in Books in Print and available for sale to booksellers. There are actually two distribution offering. Published by Lulu and Published by You. For $99, Lulu will assign an ISBN number to your book and get in listed in the databases of both Ingrams and Baker & Taylor. This makes your book available for bookstores to order. With this option, however, your book will list Lulu Press as the publisher, because the ISBN is actually assigned to Lulu. The Published by You option costs $149 and does the same thing as the first option, except that Lulu will get the ISBN assigned under your company or DBA name. There are various reasons why creators may select one over the other, depending on their individual business needs. There are also limits to what is and is not available for the distribution program. As the site evolves, more items become available for distribution, so it is best to check the site’s current offerings for this information.
While the distribution service is convenient and frees up the creator from having to manual go through the processes of purchasing blocks of ISBNS, registering with Books in Print, and manually contacting online retailers such as Amazon, there are drawbacks. Because POD titles are printed as ordered, they are non-returnable. Most brick and mortar bookstores will not stock books that cannot be returned, so getting your book in a physical bookstore is difficult.
The other issue is pricing. Though the printing service used to print books via the distribution channels is less expensive than the one used to print books via storefront sales, the final retail price is marked up to allow discounting to bookstores. Bookstores don’t pay retail, after all, they expect discounts. This sometimes means that creators have to up their retail price just to insure that they will even see a royalty at all. In the previously mentioned example, while the creator may get a $2.77 profit on a storefront sale at $11.99, the same book through the distribution service may only offer a .45 profit! Many creators get surprised by this fact, forgetting that both the distributor (Ingrams or Baker & Taylor) and the bookseller expect a discount in order to make a profit.
While neither distribution service guarantees your book will be picked up by a major retailer, in reality almost all of the online sellers will pick up your book. Again, since it is POD, there are no inventory requirements, therefore Amazon and others need not actually stock the book to sell it. Also, most of the major online sellers will automatically port your book cover and blurb to their site listings.
Sales made through the retail outlets are posted monthly to the creator’s account, and paid out in the same manner as those sales made through the storefront.
To summarize above and add a few additional points:
Pros:
1. No upfront cost
2. Free storefront and blog
3. Limited tech knowledge required
4. Handles all financial transactions for you
5. Active online community to get help and advice
6. Distribution service is convenient for creators with only one or two titles that want to get listed on Amazon.
7. All rights remain with the author, so products can be sold directly from the author’s site or at other e-vendor outlets.
8. Print quality and production values are nearly identical to any book found in a bookstore.
9. Turnaround time is generally good, and the new express option can get books printed and delivered in a couple of days (though this an expensive service)
Cons:
1. Completely do-it-yourself process means you have to handle all aspects of publishing yourself
2. Cost of POD process may push your retail price to consumers out of the standard price range.
3. Rating system a hindrance to marketing of adult-oriented products
4. Shipping charges are rather high, particularly when shipping out of the U.S.
5. You cannot get access to names of customers that purchase your products via the Lulu storefront (note: I personally do not consider this a con, as there are privacy issues involved, however if you want to build a mailing list you will not be able to get a list of your customers from the site.) This is offset by the fact that you can use the service to send a personalized Thank You note when a sale is made.
6. Company has a tendency to make changes to services or processes without warning, causing confusion for creators.
7. Instructions are not always clear on the site, but additional information can be found in the community forums.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
akyna
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Member: Julie Ann Dawson
Location: Bellmawr, NJ
Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
Editor of the speculative lit anthology "Bardic Tales and Sage Advice" ISBN 1411660293.
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