lulu.com > Reviews (12)

Lulu.com sounds like a dream come true for aspiring authors: a website that allows you to become your own publisher. But is it as good as it sounds?

I have limited experience with Lulu - I've never been able to actually finish a novel, let alone consider going down this publishing route! Nevertheless, I have recently published a book for my sister's friend's birthday present, and it is this experience upon which I shall base my review.

**So, what exactly is Lulu.com?**

Lulu.com is one of the most well-known "Print on Demand" self-publishingweb services for aspiring authors, photographers, artists and singers.

This means that anyone can upload content - be it a full-length novel, a collection of poetry, a photo-book or a music album - and then sell it to the public through Lulu's website (or a variety of other distribution plans - I'll cover these later in the review).

Because Lulu is a print on demand service, the books are only printed when they are ordered - so there are no hidden costs for the author. All you pay for is what it costs for the book to be printed - plus whatever the author adds on for their royalties.

So far, it sounds ideal. However, there is a fairly lengthy and potentially complicated process to go through before your book is in your hands. Lulu is essentially a printer, so all the work, such as preparing the manuscript, has to be done yourself.

**Getting Published**

The best way to explain the process of Lulu is to go through how I got my friend's book printed. It's taken a year from the initial idea of doing this for her to actually having the book in my hands, but a lot of that was editing the content. Once I began to put the book together, the process took about a week in total.

So. I had the Word document - all three hundred pages of it, spell checked to within an inch of its life but it doesn't look good - Arial size 12, headers all over the place, no page numbers…I had my work cut out.

Preparing the manuscript for uploading to Lulu was the hardest part of this whole procedure, because to get it looking really good, you have to have quite a good working knowledge of your text editor program - which is likely to be MS Word.

But I got it all sorted in the end - page breaks at the end of chapters, nice headings, indented first lines - all sorted and it was starting to look like the pages of a proper book. Once you're happy with the layout of your manuscript, you have to convert it to PDF format for upload to the Lulu content creation wizard.

I'd heard horror stories from the Lulu forums that the automatic converter provided during the creation wizard wasn't brilliant, so I hunted around for somewhere that I could convert PDFs online for free - and though I found a few, it was pretty complicated, so I ended up using Lulu's anyway. The wizard gives you the option of previewing the PDF file, and it all looked fine - so far so good!

The next step is the cover of the book. I'm pretty good (if I say so myself!) at computer graphic design, so this part wasn't difficult for me.

Once I had the idea of what I wanted the cover to look like, I made it in Paint Shop Pro, and uploaded it to the Content Creation Wizard. However, if you're not feeling confident enough to make your own cover, Lulu provides a fairly extensive library of pre-made covers onto which you can add your own title, author name and text.

At this stage you have your manuscript and covers uploaded - almost done! Here's the good part (at least for me, with my project) - Lulu gives you three publishing options: for everyone - in which case the book will go up for sale on the Lulu website almost as soon as you're done with the wizard; for friends and family - where you get given a private link to distribute to those who you wish to see it; and finally a private option, if you're the only one who'll ever purchase a copy. As my project was for a friend, I chose the private option.

If you're putting it up for sale on the Lulu website, then you add a mark-up, which will go on top of the printing costs. In my case, the book price was £5.50, and if I'd wanted to put it up for sale I could have added another few pounds onto it.

And then - project done! I was able to order a copy of the book straight away, and within a week and a half I'd received it. Despite the fact that the book was for a friend, I was very excited to open the parcel and see that all the blood, sweat and tears I'd poured into reading through, editing and preparing the manuscript for printing had paid off and become a *real* book!

**It went well, then?**

So, that's the process of publishing a book on Lulu. I'd imagine it's the same for any of the other content options - calendars, photo books, CDs etc.

Was it a good experience? Absolutely! Once I'd got the hang of how all the advanced features in MS Word and Open Office worked, actually uploading and getting the book was a breeze.

The content creation wizard is very easy to use and each step is clearly explained.

I'm extremely happy with the book itself. The quality is fantastic; I keep saying to myself, "It's like a real book!"

A quick note for those who go on to sell their books through Lulu - you can also offer the book as a PDF download for on-screen reading, still with a charge on the book but no delivery costs.

I can see it being less easy for people who have little experience with computers, but there are forums and a live help chat room where people are always on hand to help.

**The User Interface**

I want to talk for a moment about the user interface on Lulu - that is, the logged-in members area of the site.

Despite not having put a book up for sale on the website, I'm quite impressed with the members area, it's well laid out with a summary on the main page - what you've published, what you've bought/downloaded, your revenue etc.

I thought it was quite important to mention this, as I believe a website needs to be user-friendly in all aspects.

**Other Lulu Services**

Now, here's where my review might get a little patchy, as I've not had any experience with the services I'm going to mention.

First up is the ISBN purchasing - Lulu give you the opportunity to buy an ISBN for your book, which is the number every book has to have if you want it to be sold in traditional booksellers, or online sites such as Amazon.

Secondly, Published by You - This is a distribution service costing $99, in which you as the author register to become the publisher (as opposed to Lulu being listed as the publisher). With this you also get an ISBN. I've read that purchasing Published by You can help get your book onto Amazon and other such retailers.

Forums & Live Help - The forums are a great resource. There are several help areas for questions about the process of creating your book and the post-publishing aspects. There are also forums dedicated to writing, graphics, music and other discussions, as well as forums for different countries. The live help is in the form of a chat room, and the Lulu Expert who helped me with a query was very helpful and polite.

There are a lot of other services that Lulu offer - but to list them all here would take a long time!

**Is it worth it?**

The big question - is it worth going down the self-publishing route? Honestly? I don't know. I'm writing this review on my experience of a private project, and having never published anything to sell on the website I can't comment on whether it'll guarantee success.

I'm pretty sure that unless you already have an army of fans, millions won't be made from publishing on Lulu, but if you wanted to make some extra pocket money, or do something along the lines of what I did, then Lulu is just wonderful.

As an author, you get what is known as a "store front", which is a page that lists all of your published books, and some information about you.

I'm very happy with the way the book turned out, so quality isn't an issue. The process itself is fairly laborious - you'd have to be dedicated for it to turn out well.

**As a buyer**

Lulu is not only for authors; it's also a marketplace for people to buy your products. Obviously I purchased a copy of the book I created, and like any other online retailer, the process was quick and simple. The delivery charge wasn't too bad - around £2, and the book was printed and delivered to me within a week and a half of the order being placed. Because each book is printed on demand, the delivery times aren't as fast as other websites, however I believe you can choose a priority delivery if you pay extra.

There are Lulu printers in America and Spain, I believe, and your book is printed at the printer closest to where you live.

Searching for a book to buy is simplicity itself, and the books are divided into several categories. As a buyer, you can leave a review for a book, and even preview a selected portion of the book.

**Overall**

On the whole, I'd really recommend using Lulu if you want to self-publish a book, calendar or any of the other products on offer. The website is ideal for the type of project I did, or for printing up a student dissertation (I plan to use Lulu for this when the time comes!).

The website is clean and user-friendly, and the content creation wizard is easy to use. The forums are great if you have a question, or would like some feedback on your cover design for example.

Excellent website and service which I shall definitely use in the future!