Scary Story Writers Group Forum Lulu?

I know some of you have experience with this place, so I was wondering what your opinions were? I'm very wary of self-publishing sites like this, though as a creator, the idea of retaining total creative control is very appealing. I am considering trying to put together a short story collection or perhaps a novella through them. Please give me your thoughts!

My buddy, Lincoln Crisler, put Our Shadows Speak out through LuLu. It is an anthology and he made no money on it--he didn't want to. It was a project that he did while over in Afghanistan.

I think LuLu has its plusses and minuses to it. You incur no cost but if you want to make any money, you have to jack the price of the book up a little.

I've always been leery of self publishing places as well--it may be just me, but I want an editor or publisher to tell me that my story or novel or collection is worth publishing. I don't want to put anything out there that someone else will just rip because I didn't have some publisher backing me.

But, if I ever do an anthology of stories other than mine, I may consider using LuLu. If someone were to put out an anthology using LuLu and one of my stories were in it, I wouldn't have a problem with that. I just think that when you self publish, a lot of folks think you can't make it the "right way."

Just for the record, I have no problems with someone publishing their own work, as long as it is really good.

AJ

I'm with you, it does seem to allow people to write whatever garbage they want and then put it out there for the world and say they've been "published." Then again, that's their prerogative, I suppose. No one has to buy it if they don't want to ...

I agree with the fact that no one has to buy it, but how many times have you read the jacket on a movie or a book and thought "hey this is pretty good" and then took it home and the book blew or the movie sucked?

But, honestly, though, I've read a couple of your stories today, and I don't think you're writing sucks, so you may actually put out something good, whereas I've read a lot of self published stuff that has turned my stomach, and not because it was good, either.

Oh, BTW, I'll be getting you a couple of reviews on those two stories later this week.

AJ

Would something like this be sold in book stores, or is all through the internet? It might be a good idea for a project later down the line, if anything just to have a book for myself to hand down to my children when I have them, or as a project in my group. It just doesn't really seem worth it if you can only get it through internet mail order.

I think it depends on what you want to do with the stories. If you have intent on publishing them again at a later date, I'm not sure it would be a good idea..

AJ

It is a hard thing to get people to buy a book that you have wrote or to convince people that they should buy your book instead of some Mick Crighton novel! Self Publishing is the way to go if only to get your rep out there, its a first step and costs you nothing though you would have to pay something through Lulu if you want your stuff (art, stories, calendars etc.) to appear on Amazon or ebay! I have my stuff published through Lulu I wouldnt say I have made a killing off my works but it has been my alternative to spending huge amounts of coin on batches of books to sell and still have batches of books and nothing to show except for a slimmer bank account if this makes sense. My current sales thing is to have some short stories available to download for free like I said before why would a reader choose an unknown writers works over the likes of, say, Stephen King or JK Rowling? How else are these people supposed to know if this little known writer is any good? Not everyone knows about Lulu so I have flyers in every book store in my town and in post office windows and at my firm so this has helped and whatever short stories I made available to freely download are on here anyway so that is another marketing technique. So yeah im sure I have bored you enough lol! hope this has been of some help to you, you may wanna send Simon Holmes a message he is here and has a few titles published through Lulu and has even had one of his stories adapted to the screen and showed at Cannes.

Peter, did you go with the distrobution package with Lulu, or did you just go the free way?

Also, with Lulu, once you get your book published through them, do they send you copies to sell or do they keep them all and sell stricly through their website?

That's a great question. I meant to ask if you got any copies at all on your end. I suppose if you paid for them through Lulu, you could. But would they at least sell them to you at the base price, rather than after your own royalties (the price listed on Lulu's store).

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yeah, that's what I'm concerned about. I could sell some copies to friends, but they're not going to buy them if I don't have them on me, and I'm not going to buy my own book at retail price just to have some to sell.

anyone know about getting the books to sell or if it's all through lulu.com?

Hi, I'll chiem in on this. I published a few things on Lulu and plan to publish a novel (my last one, I published one previously and it didn't go well because of promotion) so I know Lulu.

They DON'T send you copies, you'd have to buy them by yourself. See, you would have to buy them at print price and you make money off of the price you knock up on it. Say the print price is tne dollars, you put the book for fifteen. You'd get eighty percent of that five dollars while Lulu would take twenty percent...

I do agree with you all though that self-publishing is speculative. If you're good and you have a fanbase, publish on Lulu (you all be watching for my book when it comes out, lol! just kidding, but you could...) but if you don't it's hard. I got interviewed for a radio show and people didn't buy the book, I believe anyway, because they couldn't order it through bookstore or through the internet with an ISBN number.

Anyway, that's just my two cents. Feel free to ask any more questions and I'll be happy to answer them.

But you do get to buy it at a cheaper price since you're the author of it? Even if it's not that much cheaper?

Has anyone ever used Lulu.com's distribution package? Is it worth it? Did your books get picked up by the likes of Amazon or Barnesandnobels?

Sorry David, it doesn't notify me of replies...

No, you can buy it for the print price, but you can't get it cheaper just because you're the author. That's one of the downsides of Lulu.

And the distribution package will get you into Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I've discussed this with some other authors who have used Lulu before and they can get you into the larger bookstore websites, but not hte bookstores themselves.