lulu.com or xulon.com

[ccorgr175]

Anyone have any positive or negative feedback on the following online publishing sites:

lulu.com

xulon.com

?

Trying to help a friend decide on who to go with on getting a book published. Thought I would check and see if we have any BTDT's in this department;)


Thanks!


2%

[CV]

Lulu isnt bad... no experience with Xulon.

[KidA]

Good info in this thread:

http://www.socnet.com/showthread.php?t=76381

[ccorgr175]

Good info in this thread:

http://www.socnet.com/showthread.php?t=76381

Thanks!


2%

[Tripnastic]

A friend of mine uses lulu and seems to be very happy with it. He's made enough from sales there to do it as his full time gig, but he eats a lot of ramen noodles, so "enough" is depending on your definition. :D

[t10Guy]

Lulu, done a few things through there. and my brother in law has a steady stream of cash flowing in from some books he has on there.

[Neck535]

Used Lulu... fast and good quality.

I don't know the other one.

[EODDVR]

I've gone with xlibris. I'm please with the distribution and the physical qualities of the books. I've had some issues with customer service for the author. Specifically, they outsource everything to the PI. Most of the folks there seem to read standard responses from a computer screen rather than understanding how to answer a question.

With that caution, I will go with xlibris again.

[JumpCut]

Those particular sites typically do a terrific job in terms of layout, design and manufacturing. They make their coin by marking up the cost-per-book to the author, and charging for every little service, such as securing an ISBN, etc.

As I mentioned on the thread linked above by KidA, the real challenge is making a profit after factoring in marketing, promotions, shipping, etc.

Before I landed a deal with a major publisher, I self-published in the truest sense of the word. I did *everything* from design to layout to securing barcodes and registering with wholesalers and distributors (including Amazon.) I ordered my books from a book printer that does only that..printing. I did research and learned that one of the largest printers in the country was an hour away (they do all of Grisham's paperbacks), and they would do a run of 3000 books at $.65 / unit.

A comparable bid from iUniverse was around $1.70 per book.

I recommend LuLu, iUniverse and others to authors who are trying to break in to the business but don't need the money from book sales. As I mentioned, it takes time and money to sell books.

The advantage is this: You can get your book out to the public, promote it yourself, establish a sales record and possibly flip it to a major publisher.

That's exactly what I did; sold 2000 out of the trunk of my car and then approached an agent. She sold it to Little, Brown and Co. and roughly 50K copies have sold at retail in the past two years.