If Lulu publishes your book, they have the rights to your book. For most people this isn’t a big deal, but for a growing minority of us we still prefer to have our fate in our own hands. Yes, my book is fully available on Lulu as a download and as a book, but I’ve also gone the extra step of buying my own ISBN numbers and putting my book on Amazon myself.

In going through the exercise, I can tell you a few of the things to watch for and might be able to ease the process for you. I call this option “Truly Self- Publishing” because my book is published under my imprint, Marvcorp Publishing.

The advantages are, I control how my book is handled on Amazon and with other retailers. I can allow for returns, for instance which Lulu does not. This is more attractive to brick and mortar retailers who have to buy books to have them in stock. Lulu will let older titles go out of stock on Amazon and there isn’t much you can do about it. I also found a cheaper way of printing my books that got the unit cost down to $3 each instead of $7.

First, a word about ISBN numbers. Every book that is sold commercially needs one of these numbers, they tell the world who published the book and what its number is. Unfortunately, they’re kind of annoying to get. I did a lot of research and didn’t find a good way to buy just one, they usually come bundled as a 10-pack. By buying ten, I’m pretty much covered until I’m 90 at my current pace of book production, but I may decide to publish a few books for friends, you never know. You can’t sell them, once they’re yours you are the publisher for any book that uses that number. 10 ISBN numbers cost about $250 and are available in the US through Bowker (www.bowker.com)

To get set up on Bowker, you need to decide what you want to call your new publishing business and give them an idea of how many and what kind of books you are planning to publish. Then, you need to give them your money and wait about 10 days, it’s not instant (although they did send me mine in about 3 days by email.) Be careful to print out and record everything you get from Bowker, if you need them to send it again it costs more money. Also, have Bowker add your books to Bowkerlink, a free service that lets distributors search for your book. Bowker also provides other fairly costly services like giving you your ISBN in a barcode (other software does this cheaper including Lulu that does it for free) and a SAN number which some retailers require (but I haven’t had any ask me for yet.) One ISBN number is available for $99, but I went ahead and got 10 because it dropped the cost per number by 75% and I had multiple books already that I wanted to publish.

OK, so now you have your 10 ISBN numbers, have set your new book up on Bowker link and figure Amazon will soon be knocking, right? Unfortunately, no. Amazon does want to carry your book, but Bowker doesn’t do that for you, as the publisher you have to do that yourself. I’ll tell you how I did it, and then tell you how I re-did it and you can pick for yourself.

The first option on Amazon is setting up for an Amazon Advantage account. (http://advantage.amazon.com) and set yourself up as a publisher. You will have to fill out a lot of information about your address, contact information, and bank accounts so they can pay you. Then, you have to tell them about your book, the price (be prepared to be disappointed with either your slice or theirs, or both) add some marketing text, some reviews if you have them, and submit the whole thing. Check back often because soon you will have a purchase order from Amazon requesting your book. The Purchase Order will include a shipping label and a piece of paper to include with the book.

With purchase order in hand, you have to mail your book to Amazon’s Kentucky distribution center. I live here and I couldn’t just drop it off, you have to mail it. The day I sent mine in, it cost $2.20 by media mail which is a pretty big hit on your profit margin. In a few days, your book listing will go from “out of stock” to “in stock” and there, NOW you are on Amazon. One thing I didn’t realize I needed to do was to add the cover picture so it would appear on the page. Hunt around for awhile, there’s a link for adding the cover picture through your advantage account, it’s just hard to find.

Barnes and Noble had a 10 page application which I downloaded but have not yet submitted because I decided to go in a different (and I think, easier) direction. In addition to publishing on Lulu, I now have my books set up on LightningSource. This is basically like taking out the middle-man, the same book costs $3 instead of $7. There are others out there, but the nice thing about LightningSource (www.lightningsource.com) is that they also can act as the distributor through Ingram (for an additional $12 per year), one of the biggest book distributors. This is a huge advantage when you are trying to get in your local bookstore or any chain. They also will automatically set your book up on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and 8 other places.

As of this writing, I’m still waiting for my book to show up there, but the wheels are turning. The down side to LightningSource is more cost, to get a book set up there cost me $105. Still, if I factor this into the per book cost of the first 50 books I ordered, it still was cheaper than ordering 50 books from Lulu. Also, LightningSource is a little fussier about file formats than Lulu and any changes you make there cost $40 so you have to make sure everything is perfect. Lulu was handy for this, I could make the 17 revisions to get it how I wanted it without paying $40 17 times. Once I got the cover and the inside how I wanted it, uploading it to LightningSource was easy.

So, my advice is this. Definitely still use Lulu for their online bookstore and ebook feature and to refine your book. If you want to get onto the online book sale sites and make more than a few pennies per book, set up your own publishing company. Buy 10 ISBN numbers from Bowker for $250. Use one of them for your new book and publish and distribute it through LightningSource for around $150. Good luck!

Dan Marvin is a writer and reviewer living in Kentucky.  He is the author of two books, Briefs for the Reading Room and Thomas Granger, both available on Lulu.  He also writes for Bluegrass Dog Magazine and for the LLBR.

I wanted to bring Lisa’s story to light only because of an article I found on Times Magazine’s website from a few weeks ago.  The article begins with coverage on Lisa, but most importantly goes into a very in-depth look at the “digital age” of publishing.  The Amazon Kindle is mentioned, along with the infamous free “cell phone” novels that have taken off overseas.  Daniel Suarez’s Daemon is also mentioned, which was self-published in the beginning before being picked up by Penguin after a huge following by online bloggers. 

Here’s a great quote from the article…

Self-publishing has gone from being the last resort of the desperate and talentless to something more like out-of-town tryouts for theater or the farm system in baseball. It’s the last ripple of the Web 2.0 vibe finally washing up on publishing’s remote shores. After YouTube and Wikipedia, the idea of user-generated content just isn’t that freaky anymore.

As more people continue to blog and publish online, it is very true that the physical novel is not only losing it’s paper value but also losing its dollar value as well.

Not that Old Publishing will disappear–for now, at least, it’s certainly the best way for authors to get the money and status they need to survive–but it will live on in a radically altered, symbiotic form as the small, pointy peak of a mighty pyramid. If readers want to pay for the old-school premium package, they can get their literature the old-fashioned way: carefully selected and edited, and presented in a bespoke, art-directed paper package. But below that there will be a vast continuum of other options: quickie print-on-demand editions and electronic editions for digital devices, with a corresponding hierarchy of professional and amateur editorial selectiveness.

So, there you have it.  Self-publishing isn’t such a bad thing now, is it?

None of this is good or bad; it just is. The books of the future may not meet all the conventional criteria for literary value that we have today, or any of them. But if that sounds alarming or tragic, go back and sample the righteous zeal with which people despised novels when they first arose. They thought novels were vulgar and immoral. And in a way they were, and that was what was great about them: they shocked and seduced people into new ways of thinking. These books will too. Somewhere out there is the self-publishing world’s answer to Defoe, and he’s probably selling books out of his trunk. But he won’t be for long.

Check out the full article here!

Writers can kick off the month by entering Amazon.com’s ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) contest on Monday, the 2nd.  For those who are regulars to the blog, you might remember my November post about ABNA.

This is the 2nd round.  I entered the first contest in October 2007 becoming obsessed with checking the cat fight forums on a daily basis, and abandoning all interest in the contest after I didn’t make the second cut.  For those who read the POD Diary, you know that my manuscript later became Stealing Wishes and was published in June 2008.  I felt there were a lot of holes in the contest the first go-around, but it was probably due to Amazon not being prepared for the overwhelming response the contest received.  Their new guidelines in place for this year’s contest will hopefully change that and keep the forums from being weighted down with unanswered questions from people who didn’t read the rules correctly the first time.

The winner of the first contest was Fresh Kills by Bill Loehfelm, already a bargain book on Amazon.  With only 26 reviews averaging 3 and half stars, it seems Penguin might have been wrong about their winner.  Hope they sold enough to break even with what they paid out in prize money.  I also wish they could have afforded a much better book cover (POD quality anyone?).  I was actually rooting for Dwight Okita, who did make the top three.

As a consolation prize, those who enter get a free chance to publish their book with CreateSpace, Amazon’s version of Lulu except your book is only available through Amazon.com.  There are 10,000 slots to enter.  Wow!  That’s 9,9999 chances for Amazon to profit from this by adding one more book to their inventory (if everyone used CreateSpace after it was all said and done.)

Alas, I’m not entering the contest this year but good luck to all of those who do!  It’s good exposure and a great chance to get your writing out there and receive a bit of feedback in return.  Online magazines, websites, anthologies, other publishing contracts and more were all born out of the first contest so the possibilities for publication are endless.

Read all the details about this year’s contest here!

While I’m certainly flattered and appreciate Mark taking the time to read the diary and write such a nice article about it, I was taken aback by the following comment: “Without a doubt, you have to admire both Yarbrough’s persistence and good nature. On the other hand, in many ways his story is a perfect example of working hard as opposed to efficiently.”

If you read the POD Diary, deep into the heart of it you’ll find me spending lots of time on getting the book cover just right and ordering review copies to edit the book in hand.  Mark believes I could have worked more “efficiently” by sourcing the work out to third parties.  If I had access to vast amounts of cash up front to fund this project, I probably would have paid someone to create the book cover, edit the book, and design a book trailer.  Or maybe I would have taken advantage of all of the other extra services Lulu offers at a hefty fee.  But as I point out in my reply to Mark, working efficiently doesn’t just mean saving time.  It also means being economical.  Here’s part of my reply…

The word “efficiently” is defined as performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least amount of time and effort. It is also defined as being satisfactory and economical to use. So, self-publishing basically comes down to time vs. economics based on these definitions. I admit…I did spend a lot of time on this project. I’m still spending time on it now 4 months after publication of this book. Self-publishing has been a learning experience and maybe I did waste time by editing the book my-self or designing the cover my-self. But I saved money by doing it…yes…my-self. I consider that economical at best. And so, that is efficient enough for me.

In comparing this project to the amount of money I spent on self-publishing my first book vs. the results in sales, I intentionally wanted to keep my expenses low.  For readers, the diary points out lots of good options for doing just this.  I bought a ton of nice marketing materials through VistaPrint at very low prices.  Some of my materials were free from Cafepress.  My largest investment was the BookCoverPro program, but I made back my cost and made a profit from it after offering my services to other Lulu’ers who were seeking affordable help with their book covers.  It doesn’t get more efficient than that!

Of course, my book still has flaws.  There are things I’d go back and change immediately.  Maybe some of the glitches could have been prevented had I hired professional help, but would it increase sales of the book?  Probably no more than the number of copies and downloads I’ve sold to date.

I’ve listened to lots of self-published authors who have contacted me since the conception of this review blog, and their biggest disappointment in choosing to use POD is a lack of sales.  Outside of a handful of friends and family members, no stranger ever buys their book.  And so, they give up.  They don’t have time or money (or hope) to invest in marketing their book to a larger audience.  They think that having their book in Lulu’s bookstore is enough, but we all know it isn’t.

I’m not a bestselling author, but I have embraced the notion that even one reader is a true gem.  Sure, I’d love to sell my books by the thousands and climb the best selling charts.  That’s something I still dream about.  But for now, I’ll take that handful of readers who have bought or downloaded one of my books and given me a review on Amazon.  I’ll take that best friend who went to his local bookstore and ordered a copy.  I’ll take the free copies I gave to my own mother and sister as keepsakes.  A lack of sales and bestselling numbers doesn’t break my heart. After all, the worst thing that could ever happen to a book is for no one to ever read it.

And so, with that said, that’s the reason I created this blog in the first place: to give Lulu authors one single moment to shine, to know that someone took the time to read their book, to have a chance in the spotlight and to get some praise and some feedback.   Because when it’s all said and done, that’s the best feeling in the world for an author.  And at a 46 cent profit per copy of my own book, at the end of the day my own reader’s praise is all I have to show for it.  It’s all I need right now.  And that’s efficient enough for me.

The POD Diary is one person’s experience.  I’m not a pro at this.  I admit my mistakes.  Sure, there are things I could have done better.  If I was perfect at it, I’d be running my own self-publishing company rather than writing about self-publishing my own book.  SELF is a big part of the equation, and if any other author reads my diary and can take away from it hints, tips, or things to avoid which overall makes their self-publishing (there’s that word again) journey a better experience for them, then the diary has served it’s purpose.

You can read Mark’s full article and my reply here.

The monthly routine as been four reviews, one each week with some other commentary in between such as this post.  I’m happy to say I’ve read far enough ahead to bring you six reviews in June.  I’ll be shooting for another six in July. Since Summer is the time for vacation and beach book reading I wanted to try to cover a little bit more. So, if you have a juicy summertime read for us, post about it on the “Pick Me!” page.

I’ve also been contemplating a contest of sorts to increase comments and feedback on the reviews.  It will probably consist of having to make comments on the book reviews as an entry into a drawing to win free books.  We all love free books, don’t we?  More details on this to follow as I give it some thought.  Any feedback on this or what you’d like to see is much appreciated.  Post it as a comment here or on The Lulu Book Review tab at the top.

Today’s In-News highlight goes out to the SoBo Book & Bean in South Berwick, Maine. They are going through new management transitions, but have been going strong for seven years serving up coffee and pastries, used and new books. They will even give you store credit if you bring in your own used books!

Check them out online or visit them at:

Sobo Book & Bean
241 Main Street
So. Berwick, ME
03908
(207) 384-8300

In other news, if you’ve been reading my own POD Diary, then you know I’m reaching the final stages of my Lulu POD experience with my next book.  I just created a Book Trailer for it. Thanks to Todd Fonseca.  He encouraged me to give it a go.

That’s it for May, folks.  See you in June!

Last year, I completed my second novel which I am currently working on publishing with Lulu.  I decided to record my experience which can hopefully be used as a resource for other writers, or be read as a boring soap opera as I work on polishing my book for publication.  However you choose to see it. 

Right now I’m in the editing and book cover creation stages and have invested just over $200 dollars of my own money.  I hope you will check out this new tab and feel free to ask questions or offer feedback as I go through this process.

Whether you toil away publishing your own writing, land a six figure deal with a major publishing house, or simply share your poetry and stories in blogs and forums across the World Wide Web, it all matters not. Write because it’s who you are, not what you do. I am a writer, and I have sold my soul to you wholesale.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson has a nice phrase that I think says it best.  Put your best book forward! For Lulu authors in need of some affordable assistance, check out Carolyn’s two books: The Frugal Book Promoter and The Frugal Editor.  Carolyn is a POD family member, so I trust her completely.  Her books are affordable, and the tips she has to offer are priceless!  Please check her out.

I’m looking forward to launching the first two Lulu book reviews this Saturday.  Hopefully, there will be a 3rd by middle of next week.  I’m on vacation the week of the 10th.  I’m headed to the Gulf with some Lulu books, a blank notebook, a camera, and a funny straw hat.  I’ll return the week of the 17th, so you can anticipate more reviews then.

Thank you for all of those who have left supportive comments, and thank you especially to the Lulu authors who have lined up for reviews.  Please be patient as there is only one of me here managing this blog, reading, writing, and working a full time job right now.  While you are waiting, check out some of the other POD reviewers over there in my blogroll.  Say hi and leave a comment on their blogs and let them know how much you appreciate their work in the POD business. And thanks again to Floyd for mentioning me in his post today.

Well, back to reading…