I was thinking of all those millions that J.K. Rowling has managed to amass and I thought that it might be a good idea to put a few of my stories on Lulu and then sit back and wait for the doubloons to come rolling in.
I got to the stage where I was thinking of opening a Swiss bank account or at least get a new piggy bank when I paused. Ms Doubt came up in my mind as she often does when I have hair brained schemes.
Is it any good? Does it work, is it like those self publishing scams where you put all the money and nothing comes out?
Then I had an idea, several great authors on this site have used Lulu and I was wondering if you have ordered your sports car yet- or at least a Mini. Has it been successful for you? Does our type of TG story sell on Lulu?
Please let me know as I don't want to open a Swiss bank account and find that all I can put in there are pence/cents rather than pounds/dollars.
Hugs
Sue
Comments
Dubloons?
Even though I have no experience of publishing stuff on Lulu (or otherwise), I think you'd be waiting an awful long time for dubloons to come rolling in.
In all seriousness though, I'd expect stories of yours like Football Girl and Changes Book 1 to do well: they are really well written, and darned good yarns.
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Lulu
You don't have to put much money up front at Lulu, none at all for an e-book. This makes Lulu very, very good in my opinion because they do just what they say they will do.
They have added an extra charge per e-book recently, which annoys me since it makes it impossible to offer a book for a very low price and make any money off of it. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with them.
Their chief competitor, the Amazon combination of Kindle and CreateSpace is cheaper in some ways but getting an e-Book through the hoops Kindle puts up has yet to be worth it to me. CreateSpace is also less friendly to work with than Lulu but you can make more per book while keeping your price lower. And if you spend $40 bucks for the premium service at CS, you get even better pricing.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Your lovely writing.
If you have a question about the commercial value of your stories, please don't, because your work is extremely good, and much easier to read than my other favorite author, David Weber. :)
My only trouble with Lulu is in getting them to let me pay for what I get from them. In the early days of buying there, it was quite difficult and I'd get free downloads. LOL I recently purchased "Standing Up To Life" and they seem to have gotten it right this time.
Much peace
Gwendolyn
Me too!
I bought the same book! I can't wait for the 4th chapter, but I wish she had the 2nd and 3rd chapters in the same format as the first. I have not tried to purchase an E-book, yet. Could I download that to a CD or DVD disc? Just a suggestion, but I would love to own copies of some of the completed stories, preferrably in paperback, possibly in Hardcover (Hey, Portia! California Saga?), and maybe even E-book, if I can move it to a disc, or maybe to a Jump drive. I have suggested this before, but how about a collection of short stories, maybe holiday stories, for example, to benefit BCTS? Anything to help out aeound here!
Wren (Erendae)
Yes, Wren, you can save the files off on external media.
Please, don't give copies away, as that takes the small royalties away from the author.
I have purchased several books from Lulu, and overall, I am happy with the way they are sold.
BUT, for authors wanting to put their stories there, be aware that as far as I can tell, about all they do is reformat your story to their format, and add covers. DO NOT expect any professional editing/proofreading help from Lulu.
3 authors I have worked with, have sent books to Lulu that I did not work on, nor apparently, did any of the other good editors here.
In all three cases, I could have named the author, given any five to ten pages without teh author's name on them, just by they type of errors they made in grammar, spelling, split compound words, etc. (Only one of them has ever posted here).
Without asking for pay, I edited their stories, and in two cases, the edited version, which they also sent to a second editor at my suggestion, replaced the original version.
Nobody catches everything, and everybody edits a bit differently. I suggest you have at lest 2 people look at a story before submitting it. It doesn't have to be someone like myself, or Angela Rasch or others who do this quite a bit. Just someone who knows proper English( in your version, since we have authors from all over the world.
So I suggest you get an editor, or at least a proofreader to look over your opus before submitting it. I have no experience with Amazon or Createspace.
Gwen, as you can tell from the following, I like Weber, too.
It’s not given to anyone to have no regrets; only to decide, through the choices we make, which regrets we’ll have,
David Weber – In Fury Born
Holly
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Holly
Standing up to life series
Hi,
I helped proofread and edit some grammar for Tiffany on these books. After publishing book one (Standing up to Life) I know she decided it wasn't worth the effort to publish the others in paper format. There just wasn't any profit in it. I also know she carefully chose when to publish so she could take advantage of things like free ISBN, etc. As far as formatting, she did all the formatting in Adobe before uploading it to them, to minimize any mangling they might do. I'm sure it would be even harder if your book has images. She also spent countless hours on the book covers.
So unless you can do these things or have friends who can, you will have to find someone for those tasks.
The e-books delivered from Lulu are in PDF format so if you wish you can print a nicely formatted document. A PDF file is also just a computer file so you can save it to any external media. You probably cannot convert it to Kindle format, unless your Kindle came with conversion software (which I doubt, why would Amazon want to cut into their own sales?)
TG stories are a niche market, so you will not sell as many books as a mainstream author.
My guess is if your stories are mildly successful you could probably occasionally eat out. There is probably more "value" to be derived by being able to say "I am a published author."
Hugs
Carla
BTW, for anyone interested, book four of the Standing up to Life series will not probably see the light of day at least until next spring. Tiffany is incredibly busy right now with real life.
Hugs
Carla
Kindles and PDFs
The Kindle 2 will display PDFs, but without the ability to re-size and re-flow the text, so it's not quite as nice as the native Kindle format, which is actually a slightly massaged version of the HTML you're reading right now. If you don't know HTML, their DTP platform will convert your file "automatically," but they admit that best results will be had by using HTML. Unfortunately, it's a crippled HTML with a big chunk of the tags stripped out, and you can't use CSS, the standard Web formatting tool.
On the other hand, even the minimal HTML they allow will let you make a table of contents with hotlinks to take you directly to the start of every chapter, and you can even embed hotlinks into the book that will take you out onto the Web. Try that with a paper book.
PDF's are a special case,, because this software was designed to recreate the exact look of a printed page, with all that implies. Like a paper book -- or tablets made of stone for that matter -- you can't enlarge with text without enlarging the page, as if you were looking through a magnifying glass. Most people say that if you need to use PDFs, the Kindle DX (with the larger screen) is much better than the Kindle 2.
Here's a review (with video) of the Kindle 2 displaying PDFs sideways to improve the resolution.
PDFs on Kindle 2
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
The biggest problem with
The biggest problem with Lulu and others is marketing. You _have_ to figure out how to advertise and market your product. What they're doing is taking the headache of packaging away from you.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
It Has Been Tried
Jenny Walker used Lulu. Nom de Plume tried Publish America.
You can Google both publishers and see what people think of them. Many people seem to hate PublishAmerica.
I've used Lulu and found them to be great at publishing a book quickly and cheaply. They've never sold any copies for me. All of my sales have been to me.
You can look up The Jessica Project for Nom de Plume and Chasing Hope for Jenny Walker and see their sales rankings. It's doubtful they've sold enough to warrant the expense of getting an ISBN, which I believe Amazon requires.
I edited two books for Jenny that she sold on Lulu. I know she liked the process and thought Lulu did a nice job, but she was much more interested in writing than selling.
Nom de Plume used to tag the free stories he posted on line with a link to his for sale books. I notice he no longer does that. I don't know if Erin and the FM Task Force made him quit or if it simply didn't work. At one time he told me he was happy with his sales, but he never quantified them.
Success as a writer is whimsical. Stephen King gave up before he got a book published. After getting one too many rejection letters he tossed the manuscript for Carrie into the trash. His wife plucked it out and sent it to one more publisher. Several weeks later an offer came. Rowling spent ten years finding a publisher and since has sold a few books. Grisham had to demonstrate success by self-publishing his first novel A Time to Kill and selling a few thousand copies. Only then did any publisher take him seriously and publish The Firm.
Sue -- you're one of the best on this site. You're a better writer than many on the NY Times bestsellers' list. My guess is unless you wrote for the mainstream AND got exceedingly lucky, you wouldn't sell enough books. Of course, I have a bias having received well over 500 rejection letters for the four novels I tried to get published.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Books for Sale
If you have a TG book for sale, as author, editor, artist or publisher, you're welcome to advertise here on BC. There's even a pubtype for it. FM allows only the creator of things to advertise on their hyperboard.
One of the advantages of doing a book at CreateSpace over Lulu is that ISBN numbers and listing at Amazon are free. Lulu sometimes charges for this and sometimes doesn't, I'm not sure what their current policy is.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
>> All of my sales have been to me.
There's nothing wrong with that. Creating a book is an amazing achievement, one you can be proud of, even if the world doesn't beat a path to your door.
And there's always this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ux3-a9RE1Q
Cheers,
Puddin'
Words that I speak, though only breath, are immortal.
--- Sappho of Lesbos
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
If you're only looking to get published,
Then Lulu is the way to go. Especially if someone else does all the work. (Thank you Erin)
However! If you're looking for financial success, you're searching for the Ark Of The Covenant, and will have just as much luck at finding it. To date, my financial success with HEADLIGHTS GIRL has netted me somewhere near one hundred dollars... over two years... if that.
It's okay with me because I never had the thought of making money from the book. My aim was simply to be published. A completely unexpected side benefit came about when I actually found my name on a list of Science Fiction authors!
RE: Publicity. You DO have to plan, and do, all your own publicity. I was fortunate in that respect, since I was able to do a radio interview about being Trans and worked the book into that. I also managed to do an actual book signing at my local Waldenbooks outlet, and got limited coverage from our local public access TV channel about the signing. All of that I had to arrange myself. It wasn't difficult, but it was time consuming.
In any event, whichever way you decide to go, I wish you all the very best of luck with your book. I hope it sells a billion copies and stays on the Times Best Seller list for at least two years.
Huggles and crossed fingers for you,
Cathy
As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script.
Regarding Lulu - Looks like I may still have to work!
Many thanks for the comments.
It seems that Lulu may be good for books to be published, but not to make a living out of it. I wouldn't have even minded a few hundred a year, but that seems to be hard to achieve too.
For me, I would want to make money on the project. Most if not all opinions here imply that you would be hard pressed to make anything out of publishing with Lulu and so I will have to forget about J K Rowlingesque type income and carry on with the day job.
I could always try to win the lottery!
Hugs
Sue
Another route?
Interesting juxtapositioning of things Sue:
Last week, you posted this blog.
This morning, one of the eBook outfits that sends me newsletters had some stuff about how authors could publish their works using Smashwords.
They say that for authors:
This is the first time I've come across Smashwords. AFAIK, I have no relationship with them. The website has a style guide for formatting your opus in MS Word .doc format for submission.
Has anyone else here used Smashwords? If so, I'd be interested in your comments.
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