The Lowdown on Lulu
by
Michael
Graeme
For any amateur writer considering using the
Lulu print on demand publisher, here is an objective
review by an amateur writer who has already had his work
"published" by the service.
Okay. You fancy yourself as a writer. You feel
passionately about a subject, be it a piece of fiction or
a factual topic that you have researched deeply and
you're sure will change the world. You also have a
day-job and you're working at this as a labour of love in
your spare time. It absorbs you - it is your raison
d'etre. Finally you submit it to the mainstream
publishers, but to your surprise it bounces back every
time - time after time after time after time. It's taken
you years to write, and yet already more years have
passed just trying to get the damned thing published!
Incredibly,
the publishers do not share your enthusiasm. They seem
indifferent. Your manuscript comes back a little more dog
eared each time. You freshen it up, then send it out
again, and again, and again, but you're increasingly
discouraged and eventually sickened by the whole process.
You have something you feel compelled to say, but it
seems no one will let you speak!
I can assure any novice writer that you will get through
this stage, because one of three things will happen:
1) You will give up writing altogether because you decide
it's a total waste of time.
Or:
2) You will suddenly be discovered by a mainstream
publisher and all your efforts will have been worthwhile.
Or, more likely:
3) You will labour on in obscurity, and simply become
more philosophical about the rejections.
In days gone by writers in the third category were easy
prey for the "publisher seeks manuscripts"
adverts - in other words the so called vanity publishers.
With vanity publishers, you get a letter saying how
wonderful your manuscript is and that they'd love to
publish it. You pick yourself up off the floor and read
on, only to discover that you'll have to contribute to
the printing cost (i.e. all of it). If you're desperate
enough and rich enough to go ahead, you'll eventually get
a couple of crates containing your printed books which
you then have to hawk around yourself if you want to
"sell" any.
My advice? Don't even think about it! There is an
excellent "how to write a novel" book, written
by the great British novelist John Braine (Room at the
Top, Crying game), back in the 1970's, (still in print)
in which he said he didn't need to advise any writer
against publishers asking for money because he wasn't
writing for idiots. Heed him well. John was the unknown
author's hero, a Yorkshire librarian plugging away in
complete obscurity, with an impressive back list of
rejected work, who finally made it with a vengeance. But
what would John, God rest him, have thought of Lulu?
Well, while Lulu, at a pinch, could be called vanity
publishing - it actually doesn't cost you anything, so
there's no risk in it at all for the writer, so I don't
think John would have minded. I've tried the service, and
I would recommend it, but it depends on what sort of
writer you are. If you are an unknown writer, Lulu will
not suddenly make you famous. For that I suspect you
still need to tackle the unassailable edifice of the
publishing houses. So, the chances are you will still be
unknown, but at least your book will be available in
printed format and attractively bound - and you will sell
some copies - just not many, and certainly not enough to
give up the day-job.
My own "first" novel "The Singing
Loch" was written in the 1990's and regularly
rejected by every publishing house I could think of
sending it to. This is a disheartening business, and what
tends to happen is you eventually give up on it and move
on to the next project. Consequently the Singing Loch
gathered dust in a drawer for many years but then some
bright spark invented the internet, and I started a
tentative online presence called the Rivendale Review,
where The Singing Loch was able to reside in digital
form. Then Lulu came along, and in 2005, the Singing Loch
finally became a "print" reality. It's now 2007
and I have sold 8 copies!
(Okay, I
bought 2 of those myself to check the layout and
formatting was okay.)
Am I disappointed? No. Will I use Lulu again? Definitely!
If you are a writer who wants to write, have grown out of
your early fantasies of giving up the day-job, and you
don't care about the money any more, I think Lulu is the
best thing to have happened since the Gutenberg printing
press. Thanks to Lulu, anyone who has something to say
now has a voice and unlike intrernet-published material
your work won't simply disappear when your webservice
decides to pull the plug on you. A printed book has a
life of its own, whether its come off Lulu's printers or
out of a "real" publishing house.
Sounds good? Well, it is, but don't get too excited: your
book won't appear in a publisher's catalogue, or on the
shelves of your favourite book store. It won't be
available from your local library, nor will you be
considered a published author by any of the conventional
standards -but standards are changing. We're on the wave
of a print revolution, and if you're a writer you should
be involved.
If you have a manuscript in electronic format, it's not
that difficult to upload it to Lulu's server, add a
cover, and publish. You can either use one of Lulu's many
standard cover designs, which are all very good, or if
you're fussy you can design your own. I designed my own,
but it didn't come out quite right on the early copies so
you find yourself buying your own book, just to check it
looks okay - if you're wise you also go through the text
yet again to check for typos - then buy another updated
copy and check through it all again. Other than this, it
really won't cost you anything, but you aren't going to
make much at it either. Why? Well, the problem is one of
basic economics.
The cost of printing your average novel length book alone
is around £5.00 - the printer takes that. Then there are
delivery charges of around £4.50. Already then, the
customer has had to fork out £9.50 for a novel by a
writer no one has heard of. And remember: you can go to
your local supermarket where you'll find a cracking novel
by a famous author for less than £4.00. Now, if there's
a novel for £9.50 by someone I've never heard of - even
if it has an interesting title, and I liked the blurb -
I'd still be drawn to the famous author whose book costs
less than half as much and sounds just as interesting.
But hold on, you say. What about your profit? Well, you
can add whatever profit you want on top of that £9.50,
to which Lulu will add another 25% as their cut, but your
novel's already very expensive, so don't fool yourself
into thinking you can add very much. In my own case, I
decided it wasn't worth getting into a tangle with the
inland revenue over what might not amount to more than a
few pounds per year, so from the author's point of view
the Singing Loch was basically given away, just to see
how it went.
It costs the customer over £10.00, these days, including
delivery, but the author makes nothing out of it. Still,
I have managed to "sell" a few copies and I
feel that's more than I deserve at the price. To those
readers who have purchased The Singing Loch, the author
offers his sincere thanks and he hopes you enjoyed the
book.
Now, you can go a step further and purchase a marketing
package. Your book will then get a proper ISBN number and
be available on such websites as Amazon, for anyone whose
search criterion pulls your title up. I've not gone this
far, and frankly I don't intend doing so at this stage.
It may be that you'll shift a few more copies, but you'll
need to balance this against the cost of the package.
My own advice is stick to the free version initially, and
advertise it yourself if you can. Put posters up in shop
windows, and on the notice board at your local library.
If your book has some local interest, you're sure to
attract attention. If you have a website (another must
for any obscure writer!), provide a link to your book and
some sample pages so people can see what they're getting.
Don't expect results overnight - if you sell one or two
copies in a year, think yourself lucky.
I am by no means criticising Lulu, here. I think the
venture is a noble one. The truth about writing is that
there are a lot more people at it than you might think -
millions upon millions of us, yet how many published
authors are there in circulation at any one time? A few
thousand? I don't want to seem unnecessarily pessimistic,
but the odds are stacked against the aspiring writer to
such an extent that one can more or less say for certain
that one's manuscript will be rejected. But then what do
you want? Do you want to be famous or do you simply want
to be a writer who's work's available in printed form?
Here's one author who thinks Lulu's print on demand
service is a good idea, and thanks all concerned.
Michael Graeme
May 2007
Index
Copyright
© M Graeme 2007
m_graeme@yahoo.co.uk
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