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Article - Lulu Part 1 - Book Sizes
Lulu is my choice for publishing my book. One of the main reasons I chose it was becasue of the very low initial cost to actually get a book printed. Whilst I have not given up on finding a traditional publisher, I have pretty much resigned myself to the self-publishing route, certainly for the short term.
Most, not all, of the self publishing companies around at the moment insist of you having to buy a package of some sort, and the lowest I can find for this is $199 from a company called Outskirt. Lulu on the other hand allows you to actually get your finished book in your hands for just a few pounds (or dollars). My book which is 131 pages in a 9" by 6" format costs just £7.26 to get it delivered to my door, and that includes all the printing costs. Another reason I chose Lulu was that they use a British printer for UK authors, and this reduces the postage costs for me.
The benefit, or drawback depending on your point of view, of using Lulu is that you can have complete control over the whole publishing process. You can of course pay someone to do a lot of the work, but I think it's a lot more satisfying to do it yourself. In effect, at it's most basic level Lulu will simply print and publish whatever you ask them to, and this will include all your mistakes and errors. This is pretty much the same for all self publishing companies, they don't really care about the quality of what you are trying to publish, as long as they can take their cut.
As I've said Lulu will print your publication in the UK, but only if it meets certain criteria. The problem is that unless you are very careful, and read all their help page, you won't find this out until you try to order you work and find that the postage is astronomically high. I must warn you that some of their help pages leave you feeling very confused. But, by sticking to the below sizes and formats, you should be safe for a UK printed book:
| U.S. Trade
6 x 9"
15.24 x 22.86 cm |
Black & White Perfect Bound books - 48 to 700 Pages
Black & White Casewrap Hardcover books - 108 to 700 pages
Black & White Dust Jacket Hardcover books - 108 to 700 pages |
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| U.S. Letter
8.5 x 11"
21.59 x 27.94 cm |
Black & White Perfect Bound books - 48 to 700 Pages
Color Saddle Stitch books - 4 to 48 pages
Color Perfect Bound books - 48 to 480 pages |
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| Large Square
8.5 x 8.5"
21.59 x 21.59 cm |
Color Saddle Stitch books - 4 to 48 pages
Color Perfect Bound books - 48 to 480 pages |
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| Royal
15.59 x 23.38 cm
6.13 x 9.21" |
Black & White Perfect Bound books - 68 to 700 pages
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| Crown Quarto
18.90 x 24.58 cm
7.44 x 9.68" |
Black & White Perfect Bound books - 68 to 700 Pages |
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| A4
20.99 x 29.70 cm
8.26 x 11.69" |
Black & White Perfect Bound books - 68 to 700 Pages |
The cheapest of the above options is the Royal (6.13 by 9.21), and to be honest for anything like a professional look you need to have a perfect bound. Lulu provide templates for all their size options that can be used with Microsoft Word, and using these templates can save you a lot of time and heartache later on in the publishing process.
With regards to what font to use, and what point size, any of the fonts that have 'book' in the title would be appropriate for a published book. Fonts like Times New Roman may look fine on the computer screen, but apart from not being as easy on the eye in printed form, they scream self published. I personally use Bookman Old Style with a point size of 9 for my book, but it would be best to print a few out and see which you feel most comfortable with. Obviously the larger the point size, the more pages your book will have, this will increase the cost, and if you go too large it will look like a book for the partially sighted. Certainly anything above 12 point should not be used for a novel, unless it is for young children, then a little larger is acceptable.
So far we have a book size, font type and size, so we should now be able to calculate the number of pages. From this number we should be able to work out the cost of printing for the book. There is an extremely useful calculator for this here. This tool will also help you cost how much royalty you might receive.
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