Stumble It!

Not too long ago I wrote about a handful of independent publishing options that a new acquaintance of mine named Venkatesh Rao had mentioned to me as viable options for self-publishing and/or print on demand publishing outlets. Venkat, as he is called, publishes a blog called Ribbonfarm which deals with business and innovation. But he also works for Xerox in a capacity related to the “future of documents,” so when he says that these are viable options for publishing I assume he has good reason.

One of the outlets that Venkat brought to my attention is called Lulu. This provider caught my eye because of the fact that they charge absolutely nothing to set up a project. In the “traditional” model for non-traditional publishing, a starving writer would save up all of his lunch money for a year or two and then drop several grand into printing off hundreds (or maybe even only tens) of copies and advertising them in limited runs — then just cross his or her fingers and wait for the inevitable decline. But with advances in printing technology have come new processes such as print on demand.

With Lulu you upload your manuscript to a wizard. In my case, the wizard told me that there was some kind of error and that it wouldn’t be able to convert my document. (I suspect that he is more of a Mage’s Apprentice than a true wizard.) But I was not lost in despair, oh no. I was immediately routed to a live chat with a Lulu customer service rep. She was able to resolve the issue on her end and I was back on my way in no time — wizard be damned.

But then I encountered another hitch. I had written my little book of (Youji Haiku) in a standard 8.5 x 11 Word document but was converting it to a 7.5 x 7.5 square book. Rather than trim the bottoms of each page, the document was scrunched down to fit, leaving me with a 50 page book of distorted poems and carnival mirror looking pictures. So I went back and modified the original document, which turned out to be a snap.

But when I returned to Lulu, I was presented again with the Magi of questionable ability, and again that damn wizard spit out an error message. Once again I was routed to a live chat. This was starting to feel convenient even though their software was shaping up to be a joke — or at least a series of bad jokes about wizards and Magi.

Once I had an acceptable, print-ready manuscript, I was asked to design a cover including front, spine, and back. I must say that this is where the Lulu wizard really shined. I was given the option of providing my own image or picking one from the Lulu database. Luckily they had one that fit my project perfectly (a snowy evergreen scene for a book of poetry written during winter). The whole thing went together very quickly and with relatively few hitches.

Before long I had a finished product that I felt very good about. The next step was supposed to be marketing, to include the purchase and assignment of an ISBN for distribution purposes. But Lulu failed to mention that they can only provide an ISBN for certain formats (am I the only one that thinks this is crazy?). The only square format that they offer an ISBN service for is the 8.5 x 8.5 size, and mine was an inch too small both ways. But 8.5×8.5 wasn’t an option that I remember seeing. It may have been there, but I’m pretty sure that I picked the only square option that wasn’t a huge coffee table sort of design. So now I have a book that was free to design but can’t be distributed.

Now, the jury is still out on this one. I’m not yet to the point of criticizing Lulu because they’ve been very accommodating thus far and I like the idea of print on demand, particularly for a project like a book of poetry that isn’t ever going to sell like a mass market paperback, and therefore won’t be marketed as such either. It’s the kind of book that you give the link for only to fellow poetry enthusiasts, not everyone in your contacts list. As such, print on demand just seems to make sense. Why pay for 1,000 copies if you know you’re only going to sell 30? Of course, the down side is that the per-unit cost is a little steep. You’re given full control over profit margin, but in my case the cost per-unit is around $12 — before I see a penny of profit. I set my price to $19.95 which will give me just over $7 per sale. Not bad, but I’d much rather sell the thing for $10 and make $5 on each transaction.

I’ll come back with an update on this developing situation soon, likely after another live chat. Stay tuned! And by the way, if you like poetry — particulary if you enjoy haiku — you may like my new book, Youji Haiku. It’s a book full of haiku that details the thoughts and emotions that my wife and I experienced together as first time parents. This book is NOT available on Amazon yet because I need that ISBN!

JMK