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.
