Lulu’s basic service is free: there is no set-up fee for creating a simple yet serviceable book. This means you can become the publisher of your own book for no charge.
All you have to do is upload your text and images, choose your cover binding, use the Lulu Cover Wizard to “create a professional looking cover,” make a few more choices and violá! your book is done. However, you don’t have a book in hand. Instead, you have a virtual book which, when someone orders it from the Lulu Marketplace, is printed, bound and shipped. You decide how much the book will cost, and keep 80% of the revenue generated by sales.
There are, of course, a few “bear in minds” to consider. First, you have to purchase all your own copies of the book, and Lulu’s costs are on the high side. Second, there is no guarantee that your finished book will look professional, for you must edit and format your text properly, use good marketing and artistic judgment when designing your cover from Lulu’s limited free selection, and perform all other design functions. Third, there is no guarantee that anyone will purchase your book once it’s complete and made available for sale via the online Lulu Marketplace.
To help you create a professionally crafted book, Lulu offers additional services such as text editing, book formatting, cover design, press release writing and even designing a website for your book – all for a fee. You can purchase these services in packages or a la carte.
They have four different pre-publishing service packages that offer assistance with items such as editing, book cover design, formatting the interior of the book, getting it listed on Amazon.com, and more. (Descriptions and prices of services are as of February 15, 2011.) For example:
- The Best Seller Publishing Package, which costs $629, is designed “for the author with few images who has a specific, simple cover in mind, and wants the help of Lulu’s experts throughout the publishing process.” The package consists of eight features, including “Basic Cover Design,” “Advanced Formatting,” “Editorial Quality Review” and listing on Amazon.com.
- The Laureate Publishing Package, which costs $4,729, gives you “Premium Cover Design,” “Ultimate Formatting” (of the book’s interior), “Full Copy Edit” of up to 100,000 words, and more features such as 100 hardback and 25 soft back copies of your book sent to you.
Lulu.com also offers three different marketing packages, the least expensive of which is the $2,900 “Media Blast” – this targets newspapers, magazines, radio, television and online media in order to “launch your book into the hands of high priority media contacts.” The most expensive of the media packages is the $9,475 “Three Month Book Publicity Campaign.”
Finally, there are three Distribution Packages, including the “globalREACH Distribution” package. For $75, your book is listed on Amazon.com, BarnesandNobel.com and other sites, and made available for purchase by brick-and-mortar stores.
Whether you do it all yourself, pay Lulu for additional help, or hire an outsider to handle most of the book production and just use Lulu to print the book, the final book will be on the expensive side. Remember, Lulu only prints the books as they’re ordered, which is more expensive than printing several thousand at once, and Lulu has to recoup the costs of allowing many people to set up their books for free. Therefore, the price it charges you, the publisher, for each book is relatively high. And when you make the book available for sale, you have to price it high enough to cover Lulu’s cost and put a few bucks in your own pocket. (If you purchase books in large lots of hundreds or thousands, the cost per book drops.)
As for ownership of your work, you retain all rights to your book
We at Taylor-Fox can help you create your business book, health book, memoir, biography, inspirational book or other book and get it ready for publication. We’ve helped scores of people achieve their goals, and some of their books have landed on bestseller lists. Let us help you! Call us at 818-594-0379.
Note: All the information in this blog entry came from the company website. Before signing on with Lulu or any other firm, read the contract carefully and check review sites to see if there are any problems or special issues regarding this firm. I’ll deal with these issues in future blogs.
Nadine Taylor and Barry Fox write, ghostwrite, rewrite and edit books in many genres, including health, business, inspiration/ spirituality and memoirs. Their resume is long and varied but there’s one thing that never changes: They love to work with words, creating books that are clear, compelling and pleasurable to read. If you’re interested in writing a book, editing a book and/or publishing a book, you’ve come to the right place!
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