Self-Publishing?
LuLu.com - The Basics of LuLu? “Lulu.com gives you the power to self publish books, ebooks, music, and images at a price you choose without surrendering control of your content.”
A world of publishing information; The Lulu forums including;
Creator Forums
Paperback, Hardcover, Ebook & Brochure Publishing Lulu Studio™ - Photo Book Publishing, Calendar Publishing, CD, DVD & Digital Media Publishing, Framed Art & Poster Publishing, Cover Art
Genre-Specific Forums
Poetry Corner, Writer’s Word, Horror, Image Inspiration, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Music Makers, Comics/Graphic Novels, Role-Playing, Games, Plays and Screenplays
And International Forums
“Lulu is more than just great and big. It’s also a great, big community of creators (over a million strong and counting) - the largest community of its kind in the world, as a matter of fact. Talk to others about their experiences with the book publishing process. You’ll find authors of every sort, artists of every stripe, photographers of every variety, all sharing ideas, answering questions, and creating a welcoming atmosphere that makes Lulu feel like home. Get advice from others about marketing your book. And with more than 700 groups targeted to specific interests, there’s sure to be one (or dozens) that’s a perfect fit”
Interesting that Stephen Wildstrom left out a link to Blurb ? but it wasn’t difficult to find - this is today’s world eh?
“Blurb is a startup that allows anyone to create customized books (as in, a real, tangible book that you can hold). Using the company’s BookSmart software (Mac and PC), users can create photo books, portfolios, business books, wedding books, blog books and more. Books can either be created for self-use or shared, marketed and sold at cost or for profit in Blurb’s online bookstore. Blurb authors get to keep 100% of the book’s mark-up.
In October of 2007, the company introduced features that let users collaboratively create books and share photos.
Blurb initially launched in May of 2006 with a tool to turn your blog into a book. The service has since been expanded.
Many of Blurb’s competitors like Lulu and iUniverse tend to focus on creating books out of manuscripts, rather that photo-oriented books. Picaboo appears to be Blurb’s closest competitor.”
Blurb itself says;
“It’s easy to create bookstore-quality books using Blurb BookSmart™, our free bookmaking software for Mac and PC. Simply download BookSmart to get started. You can drag and drop your images or autoflow them into hundreds of professionally designed book templates, and BookSmart’s friendly interface lets you edit text as you go.”
Tags: Blurb, Booksmart, iUniverse, Lulu, Lulu-forums, Photo-Book-Publishing, Picaboo, Self-PublishingRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Resources
8 opinions for Self-Publishing?
Melanie
Jan 17, 2008 at 5:15 pm
This is interesting - as a writer I love the idea of being able to control the publishing of my own material.
For awhile I’ve been thinking of selling other information products, such as the books offered on WealthyWiseBooks.com, but I still want to pursue my own writing if possible. Thanks for the information!
Mark
Jan 17, 2008 at 5:25 pm
You’re most welcome Melanie! Thanks for stopping by :)
Brent
Jan 18, 2008 at 1:34 am
I am an editor of a new literary review yet to publish. We will be going the “self-publishing” route, and while the print-on-demand features of places like Lulu are great, what we really need are a specific amount of copies printed and shipped to us. What printer would you recommend for this?
Mark
Jan 18, 2008 at 6:46 am
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and comment Brent. I can’t say that I’m qualified enough to make a recommendation to you. I’d look through the features at the sites mentioned above, Google for more and do my due diligence to determine which might suit your needs. Booksurge is another that I hadn’t mentioned in this post. I’m certain there are others.
Google Book Search
Jan 19, 2008 at 6:51 am
[…] that the thought might be to combine the Google Book Search with your self-publishing tools eh? They say you don’t have to spend anything on marketing yet you’ll sell more […]
Jim Lee
Jan 21, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Online marketer James Brausch went through the process of getting a book published. Here is a sequence of blog postings that give an overview of his experiences:
http://www.jamesbrausch.com/the-internet-business-book-volume-1/
http://www.jamesbrausch.com/how-to-publish-a-book/
http://www.jamesbrausch.com/book-update-2/
Hope someone finds these postings useful. :-)
Cheers,
Jim
Mark
Jan 22, 2008 at 6:30 am
Interesting….. thanks Jim
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