Lulu.com – On-demand publishing

This morning, while listening to the latest edition of the TWIT podcast, I heard for the first time about Lulu.com, which has apparently been around for a while.

Lulu.com describe themselves as ’self-publishing’, but I prefer the ‘on-demand print’ description used in the podcast. The idea is simple: anyone can go to the site, register and put her book on sale, both as an e-book or in dead-tree version. Then, if someone does buy the book, it will be printed and shipped to the customer. The author can gets up to 80% royalties, which is a whole lot more than what an author with a ‘real’ publishing house gets. They claim to have some 13.000 titles available, and are currently experiencing a grow of around 1.000 new titles per month. Books published by Lulu.com are also available through Amazon. They also publish calendars, audio and video. If you are curious about the quality of the resulting books, check this post by Chris Davis, which includes close-up photos of books ordered off Lulu.com.

All this Lulu business means that you (or I) can write a book and make it available to millions of people on the internet, and make some money with it, without needing to go through a lengthy process of applying to publishing houses, getting rejected, applying again… Of course, the money will only be significant if thousands of people buy your book, but that is not totally impossible. I believe nowadays someone can effectively market his work on the internet at almost no cost, with active involvement in the appropiate communities, blogging and so on. And if you are not that interested in the money, you can lower the price of your book, as that is something you get to set yourself on the Lulu site.

In case you are wondering why was I listening to TWIT, I was curious about what makes it so (apparently) popular. But I did not find much of interest there. A bit too much of ‘we are the most subscribed-to podcast on iTunes’ stuff. And a bit too much time (1h 14min) for not-so-much content.

Lulu.com, though, is something to remember. Just in case you write a book. Or just feel like producing a printed version of your blog.