POD Horse Races: Lulu As My Self-Publishing Secret
Win — Place — Show: and the two Print On Demand Races
There’s a lot of promotion going around about the various Print on Demand (POD) publishing outlets.
I’ve used Lulu since 2006 and that isn’t about to change. This was before Ingram and Createspace got into the game.
The main two reasons: cost and quality.
Most people omit Lulu when they talk about POD. To them, its a two-horse race. For me, there is one horse who wins the sprints, one horse who wins the long haul, and an also-ran to merely places.
Here’s the Also-Ran: IngramSpark.
Goes everywhere you want to show up. Highly recommended by the pundits.
Set up cost for each book: $49.
Annual distribution fee: $12 (or it drops out of their catalog and you have to start over.)
Revision fee: $25
Don’t bother with putting your ebook up there. You have to take it down elsewhere, in general.
Sprint Winner: CreateSpace
Great for cheap copies inside Amazon, lousy anywhere else.
You don’t have to pay the 55% distribution costs to get into Amazon that everyone else has. So your CreateSpace paperback is cheaper. And they have most of the sizes that IngramSpark can do for you.
No set up costs. No annual distribution fee. No revision fee. You can get your print book up the day as your ebook on Kindle, and they will both get approved about the same time.
Extended distribution: don’t bother. There are no returns and your book has an Amazon stigma attached to it. Most indie bookstores, distributors and B&N won’t accept a CreateSpace paperback. And you’ll have to raise your price to enable that 55%, or take a huge drop in your royalty. Welcome to the big track, not just the inside track.
Long Haul Winner: Lulu
Set up costs: none. You have to buy a proof at their costs. But you get a copy in your hands, which is satisfying. Revision costs: another proof. (Yes, you pay shipping, but Lulu is always running some discount or other.) Annual distribution fee: none. Your book stays on Ingram from here on out.
Most of the “independent” reviews of Lulu tack on all sorts of costs and fees. In actuality, the real costs of printing are that proof you have in your hands. And that is only if you want expanded distribution. Anyone who pays for covers and editing always has that cost. Just like CreateSpace or IngramSpark.
Lulu publishes the three most commonly accepted printing sizes for distribution: trade paperback (6x9), letter size (8.5x11), square (8.5x8.5 — but color interior only.)
Other book version notes:
Lulu and IngramSpark do hardbacks, Create Space doesn’t.
Lulu ships your ebook to the major ebook outlets, as long as it’s original. They’ll convert it for you as well.
IngramSpark only takes PDF files for print books. Lulu and Createspace take several types of documents.
Why This Matters for Self-Publishing Authors:
It’s overhead to running your business as a business. Successful authors will have 30–40 or more books up there for their career. I’ve heard many are north of 90. (I’m at several dozen dozen and rising, but not in all formats.) You want to diversify your sales as not everyone wants a Kindle ebook. I get more sales on average from paperbacks than anything else. You want to have audiobook versions, and maybe a course if it’s non-fiction.
Lulu is pretty much set and forget. You have your proof and can simply start marketing your book. It is available everywhere Ingram goes, forever. You can have your ebook, hardback, paperback all from the same content.
Createspace also does CD’s. Think: spoken word albums. But you won’t get your book widely accepted everywhere, and they have had occasional print quality problems.
Ingram does ebooks, paperbacks, and hardbacks. But you can’t revise without costs, you have to pay for all your books to remain in distribution every single year. Not much, but don’t miss that notice…
Booksales income is passive, but it’s not set-and-forget-about-it. Mostly, anyway. If you want to pay extra for stuff, go right ahead. Meanwhile, there are many service providers who will take your book and get it onto IngramSpark for you with all the extra’s you can afford.
Or you can to the work yourself and get started today. And not worry about extra costs at every turn.
That’s why I’ve stuck with Lulu for a decade and don’t see changing anytime soon.
Thought you’d want to know. Let me know if you have a different take on this. Plenty of room for comments below.
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Originally published at Living Sensical.