The Word Cloud

This is a general thread inviting those with experience of Lulu or other POD publishers to comment on their experience. POD means Print On Demand, and it's essentially a technology that enables publishers to print very small runs of individual titles. It's relatively expensive per title produced, so it's not a way to sell shedloads, but for books that are (say) intended for distribution to family members, then POD can be ideal.

But enough of me. What about you? This thread invites you to share your experience of Lulu or any other POD publisher. If you want to ask questions about it, then here'd be a good place to do so ...

Having self-published 5 books with Lulu now, I have been really pleased that I did. Of course I never went with them expecting to sell more than a handful of copies per year but one of its advantages is the quick turn around to press. Provided a writer is prepared to do all the formatting, editing and proofreading themselves, sometimes with professional help, the results can still be good. Though Lulu's site can be confusing and takes time to get used to, it is quick and efficient as long as you follow their rules carefully. Another great advantage is the ability to have your book printed exactly as you want it (in my case I went for 1.5 line spacing for ease of reading and slightly larger font). Additionally, you can have exactly what you have written in print for family and friends, and unlike trad publshers an author can genuinely feel that they have been responsible for 100% of their creation. One of my books was on Amazon with an ISBN within a month of finishing it. One disadavantage is Lulu's shipping costs, which are high - £7.30 for a paperback to the UK if you want a 3 or 4 day service. The retail mark-up for Amazon is high too, giving tiny royalties, which they call creator revenues, so no one should expect to make more than about 50p per copy that way. Buying direct from Lulu for potential customers is of course prohibitive because of the shipping costs, though the writer can make around £3 on a £10 book. Lulu is cheap and cheerful; £79.99 initally bought me 10 ISBNs with another £15 per any further book written. Additionally, for each book, a proof copy has to be purchased. Averaging it out, each of my 5 books cost less than £40 to produce. For anyone thinking of self-publishing I can thoroughly recommend Lulu, particularly if they don't have high ambitions for sales, but just enjoy writing and want to enable even just a few people to be able to read their work as quickly as possible. Martyn

I don't like the idea of doing my own editing and spelling etc. I am notoriously bad at editing my own work and would hate the idea of having something published that was less than perfect. Seems very expensive too!

The £40, Lizzie, is a once only payment and the 5 books are separate creations! It is the cheapest POD publisher around; some charge into the thousands for a book and most several hundred. The manufacturing cost, with which you may be confusing the initial outlay, is around £5 to £6 per 200-250 page book.

OK thanks Martyn. Will have a look at the sight to see what I think.

I am trying to use the site now but it is confusing. Well, I find it so. I have tried again and again and it is so scary choosing that final size and shape etc...but I suppose I can venture and then retry if not happy. I need Martyn here in my study to set it up for me.
I think it is great to have done 5 books. At least they are books and someone gets to read it and you can then get on with another.
Some places do edit for you at a cost.
Best
Bren

The WW can offer editorial advice and/or copyediting. But these things are fairly expensive, inevitably, so it's all a question of what you're after.

For what it's worth, I've used Lulu for two novels now and have been pleased with the results. The website is complex rather than confusing (just take your time and use the help email system if necessary) but then the task is not entirely straight-forward and you shouldn't expect to do everything in a few minutes. Before even starting with Lulu, you need to decide on a size, format and font; Lulu will only take certain fonts (use TNR or Garamond). Then you need to modify your MS into this format; things like chapters starting on odd numbered pages, correct guttering for odd and even pages, drop font for the first character, headers and page numbering, etc. Lulu gives you all this information and a checklist. Now you're ready to go.

The process of uploading is straight-forward but worried me initially because I was concerned about errors. Don't panic! You can replace in a hundred times if you want to and you're not committed to printing anything. After uploading, you can download the PDF that Lulu has created from your MS and can check it at your leisure before committing to anything further. A word of warning.....there will always be one or two errors but you only find them when you've printed 50 copies......

My first effort on Lulu took around 2 hours. Now I can upload revised MSs in a few minutes. Read their advice and do the homework before starting on the website and you'll be fine.

The cover artwork wizard is good and there's a good choice of templates. I made my own using photoshop, but it's not necessary. At the moment I think ISBNs are free; I have never paid for any. When you get a chance to order a proof copy of your book for checking, you can actually order as many as you want and this stage is relatively cheap, although the P&P is high for a single copy. What I have done is to order 4, check for mistakes, revise the MS then order 50; ordering 25 or more gives big discounts. The cost of a typical A5 circa 300 page novel is around 8 euros, so, selling for 10 euros, don't expect to make any money; that's not what it's about. The same novel when ordered by the public is 20 euros (and you can't contr0l the price), so don't expect many sales there! The benefit of Lulu, as Harry says, is that you get exactly what it says on the tin. It's a great way to have your book in print and in the hands of friends and customers. It will cost you but it's value for money. You won't make any money from it but you will get a nice rosy feeling. So, overall, try it, but remember that it's no substitute for getting a real publishing deal.

Best of luck!
Roger

Have published more than 50 books (under various names) through lulu and tthey are very suitable for my purposes. I like that they email mne everyday now with the total sales for the previous day. I've been with them 4 years and that is a recent development. They are always trying to improve which, from a publishing point of view, is a good thing. The cover wizard for example is a new development as well and make sit easier.

I have found an excellent blog that goes into cost detail when comparing Lulu with CreateSpace. I was convinced that CreateSpace would be for me until the blog writer (April L Hamilton) responded to my specific query - promptly - pointing out that despite the Amazon affiliation, CreateSpace is not a good option for international distribution.

The Blog and thread provide excellent information for North Americans, but for UK writer/publishers, April has suggested LightningSource, which I will look into and report back on.

The blog+thread verdict appears to be:
CreateSpace for American-based writer/publishers who want to sell only in America.
Lulu for any other circumstances/requirements.

If anyone has any experience with LightningSource, I would be very interested to hear about it.

http://aprillhamilton.blogspot.com/2009/03/lulu-vs-createspace-which-is-more.html
www.lightningsource.com/

has anyone tried Blurb, a friend of mine gave me the address. I have looked at it, and have thought about using Blurb. I would like to use Lulu but I don't know about the cost, as I read in the instructions that when you have approved your book you have to add a publishing pack and thepublishing packs I have read are expensive, but blurb they giove you a percentage of each book sold.

I have a friend who has used Blurb to print a glossy colour book of his travels as a one-off for his wife. It was about £40 for one copy (hard back), no ISBNs or barcodes. He was happy with quality, and it is available to purchase through the site (he gets a small percentage if anyone else buys). However, if you are looking to turn a profit through multiple sales of a paperback novel for example, the margins are not in your favour.

Comparison is a tough slog. What we need is a compare-the-market-for-self-publishing.com site that breaks-down all the hidden costs that aren't stipulated until further on in the process. The various packages each POD publisher promotes up front are NOT the final price paid. There are simply too many bolt-on variables to be able to recommend one site over another in a generalistic way. Everything depends on exactly what each of us wants/requires.

Not the answer you were hoping for, I'm sure,
Steve.

I read a piece in one of the serious photography magazines (i.e. not one of the ones only obsessed by the size of either the photographer or the model's - um - equipment) by a semi-pro who used Blurb to publish a book of his work. As a photographer he was naturally extremely picky about the quality, and also about how much control he had over the design and production, and he was very pleased with it all. He was looking to at least cover his costs, though I should imagine not costing his time, and as I recall he felt it had been worth it. And certainly the examples in the article looked good. It was done as a 'How-to' article, so I suppose it could have been mildly promotional for Blurb, but it didn't feel like that, because most of the discussion was about the broader issues of how you do it.

"What we need is a compare-the-market-for-self-publishing.com site that breaks-down all the hidden costs that aren't stipulated until further on in the process. "

Like those utilities comparison sites? Though I bet some of the ones which are vanity presses in disguise would be pretty coy about their charges. At least with something like Lulu, in theory you can work out exactly what you're letting yourself in for.

Emma

Yes, that's the badger. Or one of many, rather. I think that there is now room in the market for a comparison website of comparison websites.

My boyfriend brought home a book published by Lulu the other day that someone from his running club had given him as a present, as it was raising funds for a charity.

I have to say, I could tell immediately that it was the work of a vanity publisher! The quality was poor and it had an amateur look about it. In fact, the text of the back was very difficult to read as there wasn't much contrast between the writing and the surrounding colour.

That's not necessarily Lulu's fault. The author has the options to design and upload pretty much everything (cover, page text formatting, etc.) so if they're not good or experienced in that, Lulu won't add anything to clean it up unless the author has paid for that service.

Although I've heard fair reports of quality from writers who have used Lulu and CreateSpace, I've not yet seen/held/read an actual book printed by them. What was the binding quality like?

And the actual feel of the book - was the page paper as you would expect? I mean, the print and cover design aside, was there anything odd about the cover materials or the book physically?

Steve,

I have published three novels on Lulu and the results were entirely satisfactory. The covers are probably a litttle thicker than your average paperback and the binding is good. The paper quality is also rather better than a lot of pulpy books that you see, reasonable thickness, nice and white and, overall, the impression is one of quality. having said that I did have one small batch printed in Seville where the purple background colour migrated into the white text but the next batch they changed the printer to one based in UK (I guess they have plenty to choose from) and the results were then better. I think the printer that they allocate the work to probably depends on the delivery address.

Of course, Lulu will print exactly what you send them, so it's garbage in - garbage out. My recommendation is to give them a try. You can order a single copy of your work if you want, check it, modify it and try again. The P&P makes it a trifle expensive for a one-off but you can see what you are going to get before committing yourself. I normally go for five for the first batch then subsequent batches are 25 or more to get thre advantage of the bulk discounts.

Have fun!

Thanks, Roger - good info.
Steve.

Given that most of us stand a one in a thousand chance of getting published the conventional way I am glad that these guys exist. I fully intend to try and sell my first book by conventional meens but am resigned to the fact that I could try for ever andl not get a deal. The thought of all the work I've put into it being for nothing appalls me. At least with print on demand you can at the very least have the book in your hand and In my case give a copy to my wife who wants to read my work but is holing out for the paperback as it's much nicer to read than loose A4 of a manuscript or from the computer screen. I read a good book from a pod author about how to market your baby to its best advantage and learned that if you put a good deal of clever serch words and phrases into the subtitle then people looking for a book and putting in sertain phrases or words will at least be shown your book amongst others. If not then unless they know your name or the title of your book you are pretty well hiden.

Hi Thinker,

Printing it is one thing; making money from is something else. The Lulu prices have increased since I started and it now costs me over 10 euros for a 65,000 word book in A5 (260 pages approx), even when the order is for 25 (check out their reckoner online). The more you order the greater the discount but you can see that if you are paying 10 euros for a book that you might expect to buy for 8 euros in Megabooks plc, you are not going to make any money. Having good marketing will simply increase your loss! I sell my books through an outlet in Portugal (they are Portuguese stories aimed at expats) and sell them at cost, plus a little for the retailer and VAT. So it works out at 12,50 euros and they sell quite well. If you are ready to order a large number (1000?) they offer special deals but I have never explored this. For me the pleasure is in people reading the books, but I don't make money at it. Not until the big publishing deal comes through, anyway! Dream on.....

I have had quitE a few bad experiences with Lulu. There was a huge price hike that happened over night on books in distribution in the UK (we had no warning). I had a YA novel in distribution which took the price way too high for any teenager to buy.

My local writers circle have gone with lulu for production of an anthology - http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/tales-from-the-buzzard/13039571?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1#detailsSection

I looked at both Lulu and Createspace which seemed to be the two possible options given we have virtually no upfront money for this project, and Lulu came out slightly cheaper given that we estimated we want maybe 200 copies. Were we selling more, or producing multiple projects, CreateSpace might have the edge. But not a lot in it.

Bear in mind that its Amazon who set their retail mark-up.

Also bear in mind that if you want your book to look professional, you need professionals working on it! Our writers group are lucky to have got professional graphic design, typesetting, cover art and proof reading from among our members (as well as great writing of course!)

I was going to post a query about whether to publish an ebook at the same time as the physical book, or afterwards. I could still do with opinions on this, but having read all the above, re Lulu etc and POD generally, I thought people might be interested to follow my journey as I set up my small (tiny actually) publishing business. I am acting on behalf of my friend, an established historical novelist in the 80s and 90s, who had a severe stroke before she could organise getting her fourth novel published. I have got fed up with the tedious business of dealing with rejections and decided to put my energy into doing the job myself. I am lucky enough to have an editor and designer in my family, and having done a lot of research, have decided to go with Lightning Source. I don't want the book to be self-published, or subsidy published. The solution is therefore to form my own company and put up the capital myself. This is nowhere near as daunting as it sounds: with LS, set-up costs are £63, and for a 480 page book, each copy is about £5.50, enabling me to sell at £9.95. It will be listed on Amazon .co and .com, Ingrams, Barnes and Noble etc for £7.00 pa. The same book on Lulu would cost me £12.50 with no set-up costs. The other advantage is that when a reader sees "published by Trifolium" on the title page, they will not see a self published or subsidy published book. OK- we have to spend hours formatting the text, and I have to sell the book- but I would have to do a lot of that with a standard publisher- and it's something I enjoy. Essentially, Lulu is a POD publisher; LS is a POD distributor. If anyone is interested, I will post my progress here. Wish me and Moon in Leo luck!

I have publised on Lulu and was very impressed with the turn around time and quality of the finished book. It did take most of a day to figure out the upload process, cover design process and how to embed the fonts etc, but I was very pleased that the proof copy arrived in two days. I then made changes and ordered yet another proof copy and a third time too until I couldn't spot any errors. It does get pricy if you keep spotting things to change and have to re0rder yet another proof before you can make the book available. In addition to the paperback version I also have a download version and an Ebook available.
I've sold a dozen copies to friends and family and receive regular emails about my revenue. The one thing I am unclear about is how Lulu pay you the revenue. I trawled through the faq, but couldn't find a proper answer for people in the UK only references to tax forms for the US. I never expected to make a fortune publishing this way and agree with the people here who said that the best part of POD is that you can hold something in your hand that was all your creation. After a long wait for agents to respond to my submissions - some of whom have never replied and its now 6 months later! - I'm very pleased that I went to Lulu.

Jackie