A few publishers have recommended Lulu.Com. Does anyone here have experience with lulu?

I do. Lulu works for me because it doesn't cost me anything -- I upload my PDF and the cover art, then I point customers to a URL where they can purchase my book. It's fairly easy to use, and it's not terribly pricey for your consumers (for example, I just published a 428-page 8.5x11 book, and the 'creation cost' is only about sixteen bucks, so I can charge thirty dollars, and I feel like that's a decent price for the customer).

Problems with Lulu include shipping costs (which recently went up, causing much consternation).

Other than that, I'd ask -- what is it that you need to know?

Lulu is good for getting started (it's how I did), but if you're considering pre-printing stock rather than just having folks order a copy at a time through them, you'll find a better rate for similar quality elsewhere -- the cost of using Lulu has been going up in the past couple years, both in terms of the base unit cost of products and in terms of their shipping costs.

rafael wrote:
I do. Lulu works for me because it doesn't cost me anything -- I upload my PDF and the cover art, then I point customers to a URL where they can purchase my book. It's fairly easy to use, and it's not terribly pricey for your consumers (for example, I just published a 428-page 8.5x11 book, and the 'creation cost' is only about sixteen bucks, so I can charge thirty dollars, and I feel like that's a decent price for the customer).

Problems with Lulu include shipping costs (which recently went up, causing much consternation).

Other than that, I'd ask -- what is it that you need to know?

Seamus wrote: If I use LULU for a project, am I still able to use another printer if I want to order a large number of copies, while still using LULU?

Lulu makes no claims of exclusivity on your content, if that's what you're asking.

iago wrote:
Lulu makes no claims of exclusivity on your content, if that's what you're asking.

Seamus wrote:

iago wrote:
Lulu makes no claims of exclusivity on your content, if that's what you're asking.

Yes. We thought it might be helpful to use Lulu in place of doing direct sales ourselves, and order copies from a cheaper POD if we need any for distributors, or for retailers in our area.

what about Lightning Source. Any opinions on them?

Seamus wrote:
what about Lightning Source. Any opinions on them?

One thing about lulu - the shipping is considerably cheaper for international customers if you use an international paper size (which means, not US letter, among others). If I had it to do over again with Fight On! I would go this way instead, but when we started lulu charged the local rate for everyone - international shipping was much cheaper then.

I am still using Lulu, but I'm looking at Amazon's CreateSpace now.  It's cheaper than Lulu, comes with a free ISBN for your game book, and lists it on Amazon.com.  You might want to look into that as well.

xenopulse wrote:
I am still using Lulu, but I'm looking at Amazon's CreateSpace now.  It's cheaper than Lulu, comes with a free ISBN for your game book, and lists it on Amazon.com.  You might want to look into that as well.

As I understand it: you can publish it how you want. You can print through Lulu and Create Space and fourteen other printers and put the thing on billboards and put it up for free download if you want.

The only exception to that is: if you sign an agreement that you won't publish with other people, then you can't publish through other people.

Graham

You might also consider that if you want to work with someone to do whatever (printing, let's say) and if they say that you can't print with someone else or do whatever else with your own work ... then effectively, they are demanding ownership over the work at the most basic level.

One of the points of this site is to promote creator ownership, meaning, in this case, advising against working with anyone who makes such a demand.

On the plus side, I know of no printer who does any such thing.

Best, Ron

It's interesting this topic has come up. I recently read this article which seems to suggest there are some potentially hoary terms to Lulu's basic license agreement.

With PbL (free), you grant Lulu exclusive publication rights to your ms and must pay $49.95 extra for the Expanded Distribution Service if you want it. While Lulu's site isn't terribly clear on the ramifications of this, I would take it to mean that you cannot publish the same edition of the same book elsewhere (i.e., publish through Lulu for international orders and through CreateSpace for US orders), and it may also mean you must return to Lulu if/when you want to publish new editions of the same book.

Larry wrote: Is this a legit concern, or some kind of scaremongering?

...purchasing the Published by You or Published by Lulu Distribution Service will get it in on-line bookstores like Amazon or Barnes & Noble.com.

..the Published by Lulu Distribution Service...With this service you grant publishing rights to Lulu and receive a Lulu-owned ISBN for your book.

Raven,

Thanks. I think that clears it up for me.

Hard to tell what April is worried about since they don't quote from the license agreement. I followed their link through to the agreement and couldn't find anything like what's written above (their link leads to http://www.lulu.com/en/help/index.php?fSymbol=pbl_agreement). I've been following Lulu.com for quite a while now, and I'm pretty sure Lulu.com has never required exclusivity, whether for publishing in the Lulu Marketplace, Published By Lulu, or Published By You.

Most of the difference between the PbL/PbY agreements and the standard agreement has to do with ISBNs and how they work.

Jerry

Jerry -
Excerpted direct from the PbY Terms of Svc you linked to:

1. You are granting publishing rights to Lulu to act as a publisher on your behalf to retailers and wholesalers globally.

3. Lulu will assign an ISBN to the title and Lulu.com will be listed as the publisher in all bibliographic feeds.

7. Lulu will be the sole source of bibliographic data on your book. Lulu will feed data to the U.S. ISBN Agency as well as to Bowker's Books In Print ® and other industry databases. The data will identify Lulu.com as the publisher.

9. You accept that Lulu.com is the publisher of record and that any creator revenue you earn through this ISBN meets the true & legal definition of the term 'royalty'.

11. You may not make available to the public a duplicate project with a lower Lulu Marketplace price while the original is active in Distribution.

#1 - 9 state (repeatedly) that Lulu will be the sole publisher of record for your book, and #11 may preclude making an ebook edition available---"duplicate project" isn't defined. That's why I said the language isn't terribly clear, but you may be required to return to Lulu for future printings (a common practice among self-pub companies, and a bad business practice). The only way to be sure is to contact Lulu directly---and get their response in writing. Personally, I prefer to use CreateSpace anyway since their costs are so much lower.

BTW, I don't mean to imply that I think Lulu is engaging in bad business practices...I'm just saying that Lulu's verbiage isn't specific enough to know exactly what rights you are, or aren't, signing away here. As with any contract, if there's any doubt about what you're agreeing to (and there's plenty of doubt in *my* mind where the PbL agreement is concerned), get the specifics first, and get them in writing.

Sorry for the triple posting...I don't see how it's possible to edit a post once you've made it here...since the time I wrote my blog post, it seems Lulu has removed the word "exclusive" from there PbL terms of service; I'll update my blog post to reflect this. It's a good sign, but again, those items I quoted from the terms of service seem to grant a de facto exclusive publication right to Lulu anyway. Like I said before, clarification is needed.

Yeah, that's a good point, April. I asked for clarification about it when I used Lulu for Spione and insisted on using my own ISBN. The person I worked with said that Lulu was merely a service and dictated no exclusivity, and I could simply stop using it whenever I wanted. However, that person's not with Lulu any more, so I'm glad the official language changed too. I think I may have caught it in the transition/refinement period.

Also, I've used a local POD to print Spione for con purposes, and no one seems to have objected.

Best, Ron

April wrote:
Jerry -
Excerpted direct from the PbY Terms of Svc you linked to:

1. You are granting publishing rights to Lulu to act as a publisher on your behalf to retailers and wholesalers globally.

3. Lulu will assign an ISBN to the title and Lulu.com will be listed as the publisher in all bibliographic feeds.

7. Lulu will be the sole source of bibliographic data on your book. Lulu will feed data to the U.S. ISBN Agency as well as to Bowker's Books In Print ® and other industry databases. The data will identify Lulu.com as the publisher.

9. You accept that Lulu.com is the publisher of record and that any creator revenue you earn through this ISBN meets the true & legal definition of the term 'royalty'.

11. You may not make available to the public a duplicate project with a lower Lulu Marketplace price while the original is active in Distribution.

#1 - 9 state (repeatedly) that Lulu will be the sole publisher of record for your book, and #11 may preclude making an ebook edition available---"duplicate project" isn't defined. That's why I said the language isn't terribly clear, but you may be required to return to Lulu for future printings (a common practice among self-pub companies, and a bad business practice). The only way to be sure is to contact Lulu directly---and get their response in writing. Personally, I prefer to use CreateSpace anyway since their costs are so much lower.

xenopulse wrote:
I am still using Lulu, but I'm looking at Amazon's CreateSpace now.  It's cheaper than Lulu, comes with a free ISBN for your game book, and lists it on Amazon.com.  You might want to look into that as well.

>>How they manage to do that is simple, they don't actually register your book under that ISBN so the only point of having that ISBN is to have it sitting in an Amazon database and be displayed on Amazon.com. No one can actually find your book outside of amazon with that ISBN.<<

Which is not a bad thing as far as that goes. It just means they're using that block of ISBNs as internal SKU numbers effectively, since the rest of their system is set up to use ISBNs in that manner. They have removed the need for you to buy an ISBN in order to sell through their marketplace, but they aren't "giving" you an ISBN that you can apply and use elsewhere. If you want to play in another sandbox, you'll need to buy your own ISBn numbers and assign and register them to your titles.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.gobretail.com
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com

guildofblades wrote: Which is not a bad thing as far as that goes. It just means they're using that block of ISBNs as internal SKU numbers effectively, since the rest of their system is set up to use ISBNs in that manner. They have removed the need for you to buy an ISBN in order to sell through their marketplace, but they aren't "giving" you an ISBN that you can apply and use elsewhere. If you want to play in another sandbox, you'll need to buy your own ISBn numbers and assign and register them to your titles.