#33: Print books and more at Lulu

I've been on the fence about who to publish my Geek Girl detective series. I've heard lots and lots of good things about Lulu (mostly from techies). The big point for me was marketing. It seemed no matter which way I went, either large Real publisher or self-pub, I'd still have to market my book myself. So that's why I decided to aim in the direction of self-pub anyway. Lots of good blogs out there on that process too.

Adding to my previous comment: I am reminded that it is good form to note conflicts of interest in comment posting--I am a Lulu partisan and employee, but also blog about the industry in more general terms. Should have added that to my first post. Sorry!

There is an important distinction to be made between Lulu.com, where publishing a book is a do-it-yourself (and free) process, and companies that are in essence modern versions of the vanity press. Those companies may offer handholding by phone, but also charge hefty upfront fees. Lulu.com more resembles the book publishing equivalent of a service like Blogger, or LiveJournal. Free to use, but you are on your own to some extent in terms of what and how you go about publishing your content. Lulu does offer help via live chat and forums, but it does not pretend to provide the services offered by the subsidy publishers.

One thing about lulu is they dont provide a phone number and thats a concern. Businesses on the web should provide that.

I have done a book layout for someone just the other day and dealt with BookSurge which is an amazon self publishing company, and was able to talk to a person over the phone, also get a lot of guidance on thier specs etc and it turned out pretty cheap for the author. They were pretty helpful. The downside there is much less royalties.

Be interesting to hear of anyone expriences with Lulu