Lulu Makes A Big Mistake

I received the following email over the weekend from Lulu:

Get your book on the iBookstore with our eBook Conversion Service

Get your book on the iPad (TM) and other eReaders

eBook Conversion Services

Lulu now offers eBook conversion services to take your book into the future. Get your book ready for the iBookstore*, the iPad and other eReaders with our ePub conversion service. Based on your page size, please select the appropriate service.

ePub Conversion Services
250 pages or less: $99
251-500 pages: $199
501-750 pages: $299

This is a service that Amazon and Smashwords provide for FREE.

Why is Lulu doing this? Are they trying to recoup the investment made to create or license the software? Are they completely ignorant of what Smashwords is doing here? Or even Amazon? Or are they hoping that authors are?

When I first looked to self-publish my novel, Armistice Day, the only option I had was to go with a vanity press. Not wishing to spend thousands of dollars on printing costs (I'd already spent plenty on editing), I chose to wait. Then along came Lulu with its zero start up costs. They made their money as copies of each book were printed and sold. All in all, I was happy with them.

A year later, I'm not so happy. While I've been fortunate not to have any quality issues, I've discovered that their book production costs make it difficult for a nobody like myself to sell copies at a competitive price. My research has determined that $15 is too high. I've had success with a $10 price point as it is only slightly higher than mass market paperbacks. Unfortunately, my per unit cost with shipping is around $11/book.

Now Lulu wants to up their presence in the hot ebook market. But they're forgetting that the reason why ebooks are hot is that they're cheap. Charging a hundred dollars and up for the service when most indie ebooks sell for $2.99 means that an author will need to sell a lot of copies just to break even. But since Smashwords and Amazon don't charge a thing, I think that this is a serious mistake. For me, it's further evidence that a formerly good company for independent authors has failed to adjust to the changing publishing climate.

The Smashwords Option

Smashwords.com is a ebook publishing platform through which you can publish your work, free. Smashwords then takes a cut on each sale of your ebook.

If you have published through Smashwords, go ahead and tell us your story.

Selling E-books on Amazon.com

In an earlier post I wrote about the possibility that POD writers might see their sales decline in this economic climate. But a writer who wants to publish his work still has options. E-publishing is one possibility that seems to be especially attractive now.

Aaron Powell reports on his experience selling his E-book on Amazon.com

Getting setup as an Amazon publisher is easy. The only step beyond having an Amazon login account was to give them my bank information for payment (them paying me, that is—I didn’t have to pay them anything). Adding books takes slightly more work. Most of this consists of filling out forms (title, author, edition, description, price, etc.) and the bulk of the work is in formatting the manuscript for Kindle viewing.

What do you think? If you have published a book through POD, would you consider using Amazon.com to publish a new version or your next book direct to Kindle?

The novel has sold relatively steadily since publication, with a slight bump in October (people like to buy horror stories around Halloween, oddly enough). ”Relatively steadily” means roughly a copy a day—which is far better than I expected, actually, and an encouraging number for first outing.

Does anyone know whether this is more or less than daily sell through via POD? Seems to me that selling a book a day is pretty impressive, certainly something that is to be an exception in the POD model.

Darryl Sloan's POD experience

Darryl Sloan offers his experience of publishing POD in this video.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqTM0Zn1fMc]