Lulu

Lulu was my choice for publishing my book. One of the main reasons I chose it was because 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.

The articles here are designed to try and help you through the maze that is publishing with Lulu.

Lulu Book Sizes

This article is aimed at selecting the appropriate book size for the UK market