Free Publishing

How to have your book printed and shipped without paying a cent!

Do you want:

1.Your own bookstore, for Free? 2.Free printing? 3.Free shipping? 4.…and a large Royalty on all book sales?

Lulu.com can provide you with all of these benefits, and more! Publishing with them is a breeze. It’s really quite simple: I upload my manuscript…Choose the binding…Choose a cover (or upload one)…Set my Price/Royalty…and Finito!

They are not a publishing house. YOU are the publisher. They just provide the means. I’ve been using it for nearly a year, and plan to use it against signing with a major publishing house. Now you may be asking, “But wouldn’t a major publishing house be better?”

My question to you would then be, Better how?

With Lulu.com, I have total creative control and don’t have to bother finding an agent – also, on the self-publishing side of things, I never have to worry about paper costs, and (best of all) I don’t have to send my manuscript out and play the waiting game.

Major Houses control your work.

Everything from story to cover design. This is a business, and unless your name ends with King or Koontz or the letter K, they will change and warp your book to better suit their marketing needs no matter what you say or how hard you spit.

Cover design, for example, is very important, and as the author – the creator – you would know what design would be best for your book. You need that option to choose. With Lulu.com, you can create and upload your own design, or if you prefer, choose one of their many pre-made covers, for free, or course.

And you can make it work, using their already made covers. It’s all about creativity – how you use the fonts, what cover-image you decide use, etc. I used one of their covers for my 1st book Mad Mountain, and although I have made original covers for my other novels (Aloha Mannequins, The Zombie Hunter’s Bible), I intend to keep that one as is.

Your typical major house also doesn’t pay that much – especially in the long run.

WHAT?

You sound surprised.

It’s normal for a new writer to get an Advance against Royalties. This means that you get money upfront, like say, $2,000, but DO NOT see any of the royalties. It’s just like it sounds: Advance against Royalties. And even if you do happen to get royalties, don’t expect to be getting a huge percentage. An author – even a famous one – gets less than 50%, sometimes even less than 20%.

With Lulu? You get 80%

(NOTE: This is all well and good, but once you sign up with Lulu, don’t expect the monies to just come flying in. There is much to be done on your part – like Marketing! More on that in my other article “FREE Marketing Strategies”.)

Why I like Lulu…

You get your OWN store

They provide you with a page to promote and display you books, with the option of choosing various layouts. There’s also a blog, where you can (and should) inform your customers on price changes and upcoming books.

Zero printing costs

The only time I have to pay for anything is when I buy a copy of my own book, which as the author, I also get cheaper. Aside from that, whenever someone buys one of my books, I leave it to Lulu to print it, and…

Ship it!

Can you imagine what kind of a nightmare it would be, worrying about shipping every order to who knows where? And I didn’t even mention warehousing. Would you want piles and boxes of your book(s) around your house? The very idea makes my tummy implode.

Now for the best part…

Your Royalty

Like I said earlier, most if not all writers signed under a big publishing house only see around .71 cents of each sale. With Lulu.com, you will get 80%! Guaranteed. And it’s all based on how high you set your royalty for that particular book. Be warned! The higher you set it, the higher the actual price. So take my advice when I say, “Don’t get greedy!” A dollar to three dollars is a good enough royalty, leveling the price of your book at around $10-$12.

With Lulu.com, you have the Freedom – and I repeat: Freedom – to sell your book how you want to. You are the publisher, the creator. But don’t get too relaxed, friend. To quote a famous line, “With Great Power, comes Great Responsibility.”

There is much hard work to do. You have to get your book out there. With Lulu you have a friend that’ll help you towards your goal.

Writing it was the hard part.

You’ve come this far.

Take that next step.

Promote.

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