Posts Tagged ‘Lulu’
Getting an Account with Lightning Source
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 30th, 2009
For those who may be thinking about Lightning Source (LSI), I wanted to give you a quick rundown on what it takes to at least get your foot in the door and get an account.
The first thing you need to keep in mind is that Lightning Source is not a path for those who don’t know how or aren’t willing to do all the in-depth pre-press work. This company is geared toward working with publishers who have technical people working the nuts and bolts of getting a book to press. They’re willing to work with authors, as well, as long as you really understand what you’re getting into.
So, what’s involved? First, assuming you’re up for the technical side of it, you log onto their site and go through the account creation process. A few things you’ll need up front: your company information; ISBN prefix from at least one of your ISBNs; charge card information so they can charge the necessary fees when you get that far; and bank account information (account number and routing number) for where your royalties will go. As far as I know, they don’t verify that you’re a company, but if you’ve gone this far in getting your book published, you’re silly if you don’t at least set up a sole proprietorship or LLC so you can write off your business expenses (there are lots of other good reasons to do this as a business, but that one goes directly to your wallet or pocketbook). Read the rest of this entry »
Print On Demand Options, Part 4: Lightning Source
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 28th, 2009
Beyond just getting your book on Amazon, it’s now time to look at the bigger picture.
Amazon is a giant, but they aren’t the only game in town, by far. The other on-line (and storefront) biggie is Barnes & Noble, plus the other thousands of other “smaller” chains and independent bookstores out there.
If you decided to go with a traditional POD like Outskirts Press, their upper-tier plans offer distribution to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, and Baker & Taylor. Those last two are key, because they’re the big-boy distributors to thousands of booksellers. I want access to those distribution channels, but I can’t get there through Lulu or CreateSpace (and as I noted previously, the price model with traditional PODs won’t work for a book as long as mine). BookSurge is also not an option, in my opinion, because they don’t have a relationship with Ingram. I wonder if that could be because Ingram owns Lightning Source, which is BookSurge’s main competition. Hmmm…
And that brings us to the focus of this post: Lightning Source. Now, for those who don’t know, Lightning Source is one of the world’s largest – if not the largest – print on demand company (with operations in the U.S. and U.K.) that is used by most POD publishers – but not Amazon’s CreateSpace – to actually print the books. But they don’t offer the “author friendly” services of the traditional PODs or Lulu: if you want to go to Lightning Source as an independent author/publisher, you can, but they put up lots of caveats and warnings that this is not a venture for the faint of heart! Read the rest of this entry »
Print On Demand Options, Part 3: CreateSpace
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 24th, 2009
At first glance, CreateSpace has a lot of similarities to Lulu: it’s pretty user friendly, the author uploads his/her own files, and so on. They don’t offer extra services like Lulu does, however: if you need those (file formatting, etc.) they direct you to Amazon’s BookSurge. Why? Because CreateSpace is an Amazon company, as well! In fact, they share the same printer facilities.
So, what does CreateSpace do for you? In short, if you go through them you can – theoretically – get your book onto Amazon at a lower price point than you probably could otherwise. Let’s take a look:
CreateSpace has two plans, basic (no up front fee) and Pro, which is currently $39. If you’re at all serious about marketing your book, for heaven’s sake pay the fee and go Pro! For one thing, if you’re being smart about your publishing efforts you’re doing it as a business entity so you can write the costs off on your taxes. For another, you don’t have to sell tons of copies to recoup that cost. But the difference it makes in the royalty you earn is huge. Read the rest of this entry »
Print On Demand Options, Part 2: Lulu
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 22nd, 2009
Lulu is an independent POD that – technically – costs you nothing to get your book into print: you get your book formatted (you can even upload your MS Word file), upload it to the site, and – voila! – people can buy it from the Lulu marketplace. You don’t even need to have a cover beforehand if you’re not inclined to break out Photoshop: there’s even a rudimentary cover design feature. Overall, particularly for someone who doesn’t want to muck with the nuts and bolts of formatting, it’s pretty slick.
However, if you want to get your book distributed to Amazon and Barnes & Noble (as opposed to just the Lulu marketplace), you’ll need an ISBN (which they offer for $99, which isn’t unreasonable, or you can buy direct from Bowker, where a single ISBN is $125). There are also marketing packages, etc. that you can check out to see if that’s the sort of thing you need.
If I just wanted to sell on the Lulu marketplace, the cost isn’t too bad for large tomes like In Her Name: the Lulu basic cost calculator says that the manufacturing cost is $18.09, and if I add a royalty for myself of $3.00 (plus a $0.77 fee to Lulu), the total is $21.95. That’s still pretty steep, and I doubt many people really shop on Lulu’s marketplace, but there’s a chance someone will buy it (and you could get your book to their marketplace for free – you wouldn’t even need an ISBN). Read the rest of this entry »
Print On Demand: Starting with Lulu.com
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 14th, 2009
After poking around a bit on various bulletin boards, I came across some great information by Neil Slade that’s published on his site at MyOwnPublishing.com. I’m not going to steal Neil’s thunder here (please DO check out his site!), but I”ve decided to take the general path that he recommended.
The first part involves Lulu.com and getting your ISBN a little cheaper than you would otherwise (although it’’s not nearly as much of a difference now that it used to be):
- Set up your book project on Lulu and get it ready for publication.
- On the book’’s project page, click on “General Access” in the Availability/Project Status area.
- Return to the project list, and you should see “Purchase a distribution package” under the ISBN column.
- Click on the link to the distribution package page, and buy the “Published by You” option (note: it’’s now $99.95, somewhat higher than what it was when Neil wrote up his article).
- Temporarily make your project private and update the cover with an ISBN bar code, and insert the ISBN into the inside page information (normally the same page that has your copyright statement).
- Open your project back up to “General access” so folks in the Lulu marketplace can see and buy it.
The first question you may be asking is “Why bother with this at all?” The answer is in four letters: ISBN. If you want to be serious about publishing your book, you’ve got to have an ISBN; otherwise no major distribution channels will ever carry it and get it to all those bookstores out there. No matter how good your promotion efforts may be, you”ll never have a chance at real success.
