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Anyone here familiar with these folks?
www.lulu.com/uk
A librarian friend in The UK sent me their link. She thinks Amazon is going to acquire them.
A
www.lulu.com/uk
A librarian friend in The UK sent me their link. She thinks Amazon is going to acquire them.
A
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Sun, September 18, 2005 - 8:28 PMThere are quite a number of threads about Lulu in the writing tribes. They seem tooffer a good deal for the self publisher. However, there are also a lot of posts about the pitfalls of self publishing.
What is of interest is the possibility of Amazon acquiring lulu.com. It's gotta be an urban myth. Up till now Amason has shown only scant interest in self publishers and prefers to go with the majors. Amazon prefers to let someone else handle all that publishing hassle. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Sun, September 18, 2005 - 8:37 PM"Up till now Amazon has shown only scant interest in self publishers"
That's interesting because I know of at least one self-publishing house that sells through Amazon: www2.xlibris.com/
Can you give me links to those postings? Lulu sounds right-on, but if it's not, I'm interested in hearing about any experience to the contrary.
Namaste -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Sun, September 18, 2005 - 8:44 PMAmazon carries all self publishing houses, not just vanity presses like Xlibris. They have never shown any interest in actually owning one though---they're not huge moneymakers. Amazon has the muscle to buy a major house, but since they own the world's largest bookselling portal, they prefer to let someone else risk their ass choosing manuscripts from the slushpile. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Sun, September 18, 2005 - 11:16 PMWhat exactly makes a publisher a "vanity press" btw? -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 11:31 AMActually, scratch my last question. Here's another one: Is it appropriate to approach an prospective agent with a vanity edition of your novel for promotion? -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 1:07 PM>>Is it appropriate to approach an prospective agent with a vanity edition of your novel for promotion?
If it sold well, meaning more than a few thousand, and not from the trunk of your car. If you just had it printed up to show them, then it really isn't appropriate. They want to see white paper, double-spaced stuff. If they take you on, the publisher will pick the title, and the illustrator, and the chapter breaks, not to mention edit the thing a bit. So there's no real benefit. AND, if it was done badly or doesn't strike the editor well, you may get rejected without a fair shake. Don't judge a book by its cover and all, but it is still alive and well. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 1:13 PM"The publisher will pick the title and the chapter breaks."
They'll change the name of your novel and where the chapters fall. That's a bit upsetting. If the author breaks down the chapters for a particular effect or pace, that could jeopardize it. Same with a good, resonant title. I know they'll want to make changes, but those . . . very unsettling. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 1:36 PM>>I know they'll want to make changes, but those . . . very unsettling.
Well, you DO have the ability to say "no," however, that generally means them not publishing your book. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that they know what is best for selling your book. I've had an editor tell me that "no author knows how best to break up their chapters for best effect."
Granted, when you get to be a big name, you can pretty much do what you want. But when you are starting out you are pretty much at the whim of the publisher.
Granted this is a bit different is you go with a small press. But if you are at Random House or the like, be prepared. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 2:47 PMYikes. You give them art and they want your soul. :( -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 2:54 PMthat is why I have a working title for my novel, but I have never allowed myself to get emotionally attached to it.
The business end of this art is pretty gruesome. I feel like a piece of meat on the good days. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 3:02 PMMakes self-publishing look that much more appealing. If the critics of my current work-in-porgress are any indication, my novel will be utterly sellable. It would suck to compromise that just because an editor "didn't get it". Once again it comes down to money or art.
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 3:00 PMWell, it is a business. They invest money in you and want to have some control over it. There are people who have managed to become successful without giving away their souls AND you may have written and titled the book so well that no change is necessary. But you should also be open to the possibility that they will do something that makes what you produce accessible to more people and there is still plenty of good literature on the book shelves out there. So maybe they do know something. . . -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 3:06 PMI guess I should also take heart in the fact that even big publishing houses put out crap. Gives me more confidence in my work's sellability and quality. We've all suffered bad books before. Hell, it's why I started writing in the first place: the old "woah, I can do WAY better than this published drek" syndrome. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 3:07 PMUnfortunately though I'm more about the art than the commerce. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 3:21 PM>> Unfortunately though I'm more about the art than the commerce.
This statement is probably worthy of a thread unto itself. In fact, I'll start one. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 19, 2005 - 10:18 PMYou have to be very VERY big before they stop changing stuff .... Isaac Asimov & Stephen King (to name the ones I can remember at this point), did a hell of a LOT of bitching on this point. Fortunately, Asimov became such a legend that he got to "fix" a lot of stories that were being re-published in anthologies. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Sat, September 24, 2005 - 9:50 PMYou really have to stop and ask yourself what is more important: Having your work published and read by millions, or maintaining your artistic control and being shunned by editors. On the other hand, editors have been in the business a long time and tend to have a good eye for how to package a book (that is after all what they do for a living.)
Personally, I wouldn't mind working with an editor. I think it would improve my work. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 26, 2005 - 7:16 PM"You really have to stop and ask yourself what is more important: Having your work published and read by millions, or maintaining your artistic control and being shunned by editors."
I can see Adam covering his eyes and sighing right now..."oh crap, it's Buckley again..." ...hehe.
I think there is a middle ground. Something of a hybrid of what I do, and though I get the feeling that I'm on a thread with a group of 'traditionalists', I have never thought that way. Adam probably knows what's coming next, and that is:
Self-Publish and develop your own readers online. Talk, talk, talk. Take your time and start on your next book. Talk more and give away digital versions to people when they interact with you.
Now, I'm doing comic books, not a novel---but I am publishing my graphic novel at the end of this year...through Lulu.com, and it's a collection of my works for the year +1 (only seen in print). I have a 40,000 following right now, made from word of mouth, and if they want to get the last issue of the year, they have to get the book.
Should be interesting to see what happens.
If you want to go the traditional route, I completely agree with Adam, who's usually right on point in all his posts...go with the Editors.
Personally, I say through tradition out the window. Do it your own way and learn to use the internet as the powerful tool it is...it's working for me.
Jaime Buckley
www.wantedhero.com
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 26, 2005 - 7:31 PMPublishers don't ALWAYS change your title, but they can, usually because the one you picked isn't strong enough or concise enough or fitting enough for the market they're trying to sell you into. If you're dealing with a good publisher they'll involve you in the process. I had two novel titles changed by Putnam/Berkley, and in both cases I ended up suggesting titles which were then approved by the managing editor, though in one case it took several rounds. It wasn't a HORRIBLE process, but I still warned them I would title all future books "Leather Nuns on Wheels," since they'd just make me change the title anyhow.
When it comes to substantial changes to your text, the editors don't make those, they suggest them to you in the proofs stage, with reasons why. I'm talking here of good, reputable, professional publishers; there are other kinds. I recently heard a horror story of a local writer who discovered after her novel had shipped that her editor had cleaned it up to match her own standards of political correctness. The author broke her contract over it, and that publisher no longer has the right to publish the book. In this case she was dealing with a company who is far from professional. -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 26, 2005 - 8:20 PM>>Leather Nuns on Wheels
Hey! Now THAT's a book I would read! -
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Mon, September 26, 2005 - 10:44 PMI'd better get started then...
Correction, Berkley changed THREE of my titles, the third changed by a different editor than the first two, and rather unsatisfactorily, to something rather dumb.
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Sun, November 23, 2008 - 7:18 PMThey make you order a set number of books after publication.
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Sun, November 23, 2008 - 7:13 PMThat IS true. Amazon.com supports self-publishers such as XLIBRIS, Authorhouse, etc.
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Tue, September 27, 2005 - 5:49 AMWhat I would find most useful is a discussion of which among those E-publishers actually generate revenue at what volume and dollars. Also it'd be useful to know what works tend to sell most on what sites.
The E-publishers have a strong motivation to Not put that informatin out because if the numbers aren't stellar people will be discouraged from going that route.
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Re: Electronic self publishing
Sun, November 23, 2008 - 7:27 PMIn the writers groups I belong to and the writers I know it's generally accepted that self-publishing is great for non-fiction like self-help, how to and anything with a niche. There are people out there Googling books on how to turn their car into a vegetable burning vehicle, for example. They put it in the search engine and the book pops up. And authors can use that niche to sell their books further. AND in self-publishing you can make more per book sold, HOWEVER you may not have the distribution that a regular publishing company has or you may have to work harder to get Borders or Barnes and Nobles to carry the few copies you have sent there.
However, self-publishing doesn't always work as well for fiction writers.
