Self-published? Indie-author? There's much written about which one of these you are if you put a book out yourself on the internet right now. One has connotations - and so does the other. Personally, I don't pay any attention. I don't class myself as either - and should a publishing deal come along, neither would I class myself as a 'published author'. I'm just a writer and it makes no difference to me. I've read great books by people who have done it themselves and awful books by people who a company has put money into, so think about that. Exactly what is the difference? It probably comes down to the justification of being able to call yourself a writer, but here we are… writing. Anyway, somebody asked me a few days ago what I thought of Lulu as a supplier/provider of products. I use them exclusively for hard copy materials for many reasons and though they're not perfect, I think they're just about the best out there. Yesterday, I received a survey from them to fill in too but I thought I'd go one better and give a proper insight into what I get out of them - and I guess, if you're new to the game - what you can get out of them.
It's worth bearing in mind, that I've got twenty years in magazine publishing behind me, so I know my way around InDesign and other useful tools when it comes to this game. Regardless, Lulu is still your best bet if you're going down this road.
Firstly, I've road-tested all of their options as hardback and softback books in many sizes. As final products, the average Joe would be hard pushed to tell the difference between Lulu and 95% of publishing companies you could pull off the shelf at the bookstore. The other 5% is pretty much reserved for the big guns who know their products well and spend accordingly. To the untrained eye however, it's not even as issue. Softbacks have always been top quality and my only gripe with the dust-jackets on the hardcovers is that more often than not, once the book is in use, the jacket flaps tend to curl. Paper too thin or not laminated enough? I'm not sure but the last couple I bought are of much better quality. I put together some 400 page dust jacket hardback blank proofs of Turn The Lamp Down Low to see how it would compare actually sitting on the bookshelf once I had finished the cover art and there's not a curl in sight. They are great. I even took one to Waterstone's to see if it would stack up on a regular shelf with some competition and it's totally fine.
Don't be afraid of testing your books out like this - what are they going to do? Throw you out?
Price-wise - it works for me. You can easily match what a bookstore sells them for and mark down your book too if you're in the mood. It depends how business-like (or greedy) you happen to feel and what your business model is. What Lulu does exceptionally well right now is handle the nightmare of getting your book on iBooks. It does take a while but that's Apple for you and not Lulu - once it's done though, I figure the percentage they take off me is more than worth it for the service they provide. I might be capable of doing a lot of this process myself but I don't really want to spend all my time in the back-room. Maybe soon, Apple will adopt the kindle method (which is "live or die by your own devices") but I doubt it - and I hope not. The iBooks method is keeping the quality of the end product at a premium. The kindle way is great too but it does mean there's no gatekeeper - and you know what, I kind of like the gatekeeper. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. I digress. I do that a lot.
Here's where the rough stuff comes in. If you've designed your book in Word or Pages - or anything but InDesign or Quark (do people still use Quark?), you'll have an inferior end product simply because word processing applications aren't built for that sort of thing. Kind of like like thrashing an MG Midget from London to Glasgow. In theory, it can do it, but we'd all like to get there in one piece and alive. I'm not trying to sell you my services here either. Totally not interested thanks - just telling it the way it is. Here's how I have always looked at it - if Harper Collins use InDesign, so will I. If they do their book covers in Photoshop or Illustrator, that's what I'm going to use.
Which begs the question of yourself - digressing again - what are you doing? Getting your book out there to tell a story - in which case, why not just paste it online and let people read it? If however, you want a great product to drive your story and your name as a brand, there is no other way but this way. If you can't afford the software, find a way. It's not hard to learn. Seriously. There should be advice about this sort of thing but I didn't think I would be the one saying it.
With regards to the cover, Lulu offer a) an upload option for your professionally produced file or b) a rubbish option that will will make your end product look like you chose the rubbish option when you were deciding. Or the "I can't be bothered getting it done properly" option as I prefer to call it. Seriously, your book will look like a school project - or maybe even just like 90% of the ebooks available in the world. We're quite far into this ebooks game now. It's not impressing anybody.
Then again, maybe that's OK. If that's really what you want, go for it. Back on subject, Lulu will cater to either option and it really is easy.
I'll end with the two things that really rattle my cage me about Lulu - and I'm pretty sure they would be easy to fix if they thought about it. The first is, in my book Black Dye, White Noise, I placed some pictures. Full page pictures that bled off the page. Now Lulu doesn't allow you to upload artwork with bleed but by making them bleed in my file, I made sure they would be guaranteed to fill the page. On the softback versions, I have an 'inconvenient' blank white strip of about 5mm on those picture pages on the top edge of some and the bottom edge of others. For some reason, they are perfect on the hardback versions. Basically, this means that whoever is making their softback versions is not guillotining them properly.
Yeah - it annoys me a lot because there's no need for it. It means I'm not getting the true dimensions I have ordered in my book. Right now, it's acceptable 'collateral damage' for doing it this way but long-term, not so sure. A little quality control wouldn't go amiss.
The second annoyance is that when making a hardback, if you take you dust jacket off, down the spine you'll find the filename of your book in a crappy font, that looks just terrible. I'd actually prefer it if there was nothing at all on there than have this. Especially as the process means this text isn't centred and has no quality control about it.
In the big scheme of things, I can take these two knocks on the head. Lulu is still, by a long, long shot, the best way to publish a book on your own terms. They also offer some fine discounts nearly every month on your own products or postage so that you can afford to stock up on your titles every now and then and eeek a little more money out of the system without passing it on to your readers.
Let's not forget, when all is said and done, your readers are everything - that's why I would encourage you to find a way to do the best job you can on your product. If it doesn't look and feel like the real thing, that will be how you are viewed. End of story.
Finally - always, without a moments hesitation, buy yourself a copy before you make it available to anybody. There's nothing like having a real copy of the book in your hands to make any mistakes jump off the page and make you feel like a fool, but better to be a fool in front of yourself than a fool in front of thousands. (That goes for blogging as well - I don't want to knock somebody who cracked the holy code but I read Amanda Hocking's blog one day - dozens and dozens of posts one after the other - and it's riddled with typing errors. Not a good thing to let slip in my mind, but apparently gazillions of people don't mind. Go figure.)
Any questions? Only too pleased to answer them...