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BOOKSURGE LULU.com LightningSource and Other POD Summary Experience
and
UPDATE October 16, 2007
After about five weeks of trying to get my book published by BookSurge using their express service, I finally gave up after receiving a very poor quality proof of my book. I requested a refund and they quickly gave it to me. At this time, I can not recommend their services.
I then went to www.LightningSource.com and submitted the book to them, and very quickly received my proof, which was excellent quality. I was able to use the same ISBN I had purchased through the books distribution arrangement on www.LULU.com for which I paid $50. Please see http://www.neilslade.com/myown4.html for details about how to do this for your own title.
In the end, LightningSource provided me with a better royalty than BookSurge, a better quality proof, much better customer service, and the submission was easier (they stayed on the phone with me through the process).
Although I am no longer recommending BookSurge, you may continue to read about my experience, and also learn the details for the book submission guidelines. I would suggest using the ADOBE DISTILLER METHOD for embedding fonts and protecting image resolution, rather than even trying BookSurges own recommended method for conversion to PDF using Acrobat.
And: And HOW TO GET YOUR BOOK READY FOR BOOKSURGE A METHOD THAT ACTUALLY WORKS: BOOKSURGE PDF SUBMISSION SECRETS REVEALED I've been self publishing perhaps the most popular manual on the Yahoo search engine (and for a time #1 on Google as well, and perhaps again soon) for car painting, "how to paint a car" or "paint a car" and "paint your car" etc etc, and variation thereof: EasyPaintACar.com Besides the car title (admittedly a brief non-literary manual) I also make my entire living self-publishing my other 5 books, 20 CDs, and 2 feature film DVDs on brain and behavior science, amygdala, frontal lobes...just a bit of my qualifications here, (this is not a commercial :-) I've run my OWN print shop, and printed with local presses, and have offered online digital downloads as well through my own website, and made my entire living for the past 7 years on my titles alone. Lately I decided to explore Print On Demand services for small runs, and figuring out how to get on Amazon. Bear in mind, I've been writing and publishing since 1989, I am published in Europe by Rowohlt Verlage (a very big publisher), and I can count some major authors and book review editors among my friends. This is what I've learned recently in regards to POD publishing, retail through Amazon and similar, and what is possible outside the conventional wisdom: #1- If you are an author, and figure you can print your own books and then get on Amazon through their Advantage program-- JUST FORGET IT. The take Amazon extracts in retailer discount (they demand a 60% discount), added to your print costs, added to your shipping (they don't pay your shipping costs) makes it virtually IMPOSSIBLE for the independent author, first to even navigate through the process, but more importantly, you will make so little money in this method, you would be better asking for spare change on the corner. #2- You can get a distribution deal through one of several online POD services like LULU, LightningSource, or BookSurge and it appears to be possible to make a little money-- between nothing and 25% of the retail price depending on what you do. #3- There are many people who have sold THOUSANDS of books, if not more, through genius and/or hard work self-promotion, admittedly a lofty endeavor. I've sold about 50,000 books through my website ALONE, and I didn't even have an ISBN on any of them, and wasn't on Amazon or any other online website book portal. There are many other good examples. Granted, yes, the majority of writers that self-publish or go POD (Print On Demand), will sell next to nothing, and that's extremely common, but it's not cast in stone. Writing and making a printed copy is only the beginning. Some authors hit the Lottery Jackpot-- most of us must work at selling our book, just like everybody else has a job.
Okay, onward... YOUR PRINT ON DEMAND OPTIONS A RETROSPECTIVE FIRST....
I've been publishing for about 20 years, and the last ten have been full time. You can always hire a printer, either local or online to print your books. Most will require a pretty good sized run of several hundred books or more to reduce the cost of each book to a price that will allow you to sell your book at a competitive and reasonable price (where ever you end up selling it). This generally requires an investment of at least $800 to get started, and often, considerably more depending on the company. This is fine if you have a lot of money sitting around, but you will end up with LOTS of BOOKS collecting dust if you haven't got your marketing together or already have a demand for your title. I have printed with JOHN PHILLIPS in Denver for years, and they would do VERY SMALL runs of books for me (from 1-25 books), and charge exactly the same as for a large run (25-100+ books), and the prices weren't bad--- not great, but not bad either. These were nice looking perfect bound books. You can possibly find a friendly local printer if you shop around a lot, and come to a similar arrangement. Look around A LOT, printing prices vary to an amazing degree. This is certainly not the most cost effective way to print, and I was limited to black and white covers (color was just too expensive), but for a long time this worked for me. After about eight years I began printing and binding my own books to save money. If I did the work myself, cost was 1/3 what I paid a printer. I printed in my own office using first Brother Laser Jet Printers (five of them), and then Canon Inkjet printers (I had six of them). I learned that the inkjet books looked better as a laserjet curls the pages from high heat and the inkjet pages came out perfectly flat. The ink was more expensive for the inkjets, but I used continuous ink systems for a while, and also refilled my cartridges myself. This saved ENORMOUS amounts of money on ink. See details here http://InkJetHelper.com I printed on pre-cut 19 hole perforated 24lb. paper which I bough by the case from Lewis Paper in Denver, but this invariably got stuck often in the laser jet and caused me untold frustration, but I managed for a long time. Finally I couldn't stand all the laser problems and moved to the inkjets. I bound the books using plastic comb binders using a $20 "Finishing Touch" manual binding rig I got on ebay (still use it whenever I bind a booklet or something). I made beautiful color covers on photo stock, covered with a clear acetate to protect the cover photostock, and the books looked very nice. You can see all my book covers here http://www.neilslade.com/order.html , each one that I designed myself. Bear in mind MANY university textbooks are comb binding, and sell for mucho dinero. I sold THOUSANDS of these books to very satisfied and loyal customers. After about nine or ten years of local printshop books, then my own printing and binding, I finally began selling enough online downloads, audio books, and DVDs to the point where it was not necessary for me to make printed books any longer to support myself. I took a cut in income to a certain degree, but freed myself from either the cost of printing books, or the large amount of labor and time it took for me to run the printshop myself. Although I could make a 250 page book myself for one third the cost of having the printer do it, it took a lot of time. I must admit, I saw THOUSANDS of DVD and VHS films that I checked out from the local library at home while running my printing operation. Not a bad job at all. Recently however, I wanted to make physical books available again as an option, and this became possible through the relatively low cost of POD publishing. Companies like LULU.com, BookSurge.com, and Lightning Source are nice because theoretically, you just set up the title, and they only print what is sold. Your investment is small to get started, and you can concentrate on marketing and promotion. Further, it frees you, the author, from shipping and other office work to fulfill orders. This is OKAY if you can afford it. Again, by printing and/or shipping yourself, a distinct and practical route, you will invariably make much more money, several times more, by engaging your own elbow grease. I have made a living for the past seven- gee, or is it nine or ten? I dunno, lost track... :-) , totally, in this way. I have NOT sold on Amazon, nor in any bookstores save The Tattered Cover, and I have completely supported myself through my own efforts of getting word out about my books and music. I am very lucky, but I have also worked EXTREMELY hard. Perhaps you have another job, and you don't have the time nor inclination to print and ship yourself. Then, POD is a good alternative. In practice, however, there are REAL PITFALLS to avoid. Keep reading...
Booksurge does offer expensive full publishing services ($700 and up)- where you give them nothing but your copy, and they crank out a fully done book. BUT, they do offer a completely affordable Express package for $99 where you get an ISBN and submit your own press ready PDF file-- bam, you're in business and on Amazon- If you can sneak your way past their submission traps. (Explained below!) LightingSource offers a similar under $100 package, but you have to buy your own ISBN separately-- $300 for a set of 10, or a LOT of MONEY just for 1 ISBN. Oops. I made THAT mistake, and I now am sitting on 10 ISBNS that I don't need whatsoever. Ah well. Live and learn. Important UPDATE October 16, 2007 Please see http://www.neilslade.com/myown4.html
Anyway, Booksurge or LightningSource, in the end it's not hard to do at all (ONCE YOU FIGURE OUT HOW), you just need to convert your book copy to PDF, and do it correctly--- so you have to follow some special instructions. On LULU (more on LULU later) it was a snap-- you don't even need to convert from Word to PDF if you don't want to, but if you do (to retain special fonts or formatting), its not that painful, and you can do it in minutes (again once you do it the first time) and LULU PDF conversion can be done with a minimum of fuss if you follow the directions. The big question is this for RETAIL publishing: Will you necessarily sell A LOT MORE books because you are on Amazon to justify the HUGE loss in profit you will make per book? Anything sold retail requires that you have a huge chunk taken out of your sales profit that you hand over to the retailer, versus keeping all of the profit after costs when you sell on your own web site, versus something like selling on LULU Marketplace where you still retain a much larger piece of the retail pie price yourself. I have not answered this question for myself, and my guess is that one cannot know until one TESTS the hypothesis for one's own titles. An interesting anecdote: A friend of mine wrote a book on "getting into medical school". He had his own web site and sold about 20 books. He published through Lightning Source, got an Amazon page, and sold 1300 books. Bear in mind, his own web site was virtually unknown-- so there are many variables to consider and test. HOWEVER, first-
BOOKSURGE SUBMISSION SECRETS REVEALED Booksurge. Ahem.... I signed up for the $99 Booksurge PDF Express contract--- you submit your own press ready PDF file, and they publish. Easier said then done. Well, if you write your book
on Microsoft Word, and can make a cover in Photoshop, this should be
no more than a few hours work at most. $99 sounds very I have spent a FULL MONTH trying trying trying to submit my book (with black and white jpg. images) file to Booksurge for publication. 17 REVISIONS. I finally figured out the problem. The INSTRUCTIONS provided by BookSurge were FLAWED. There is NO WAY following their given instructions will you have an acceptable book file if you have images and use Acrobat 7 to convert to PDF. MAYBE works if you don't have images, but that's a coin flip again, depending on your PC setup. I can only
imagine there are THOUSANDS of customers who have gone through this
exact same unbelievable frustration trying to meet their specs using
their instructions. Time for BookSurge to fix their submission
instructions already. Its hard to believe they don't know what
they've left out. I think I will write a book
about it. HAHAHA! And sell it on my own site. WELL HERE IS WHAT THEY LEFT OUT:
ABOUT LULU.com In any case, I've looked at LULU, and I have published a version of a couple of my books there for a year-- (see www.lulu.com/neilslade ) through the free set-up Lulu Marketplace, and get an astonishing 50% royalty (better even on digital downloads) IF I SELL ON LULU MARKETPLACE. I make between $200-$300 a month on my titles alone there. Please take note: IF I sell on Lulu Marketplace I make money with LULU. This excludes their RETAIL setup... Lulu also offers a RETAIL contract: For $50 setup, you get and ISBN and they will distribute retail, through Amazon and others. Sounds great, right? Hahahhah. Amazon takes a HUGE chunk from Lulu, and Lulu adapts, and you, the author, loses big time. If you put your thinking cap on, you discover that although their retail agree looks good on the surface, once you calculate the cost of any reasonably sized book-- say 300+ pages, the cost of the book skyrockets to above any reasonable purchase price, and your reduced retail royalty is absolutely absurd. Example: Make a 500 page book, the MINIMUM selling price is $24, and you make 31 cents. This is NOT a typo. 31 CENTS royalty. If you want a full $1, the cost of the book minimum is $25.50. A paperback 6X9. Black and white inside. Lets say you want to make a
350 page paperback-- minimum Lulu retail cost: $19.50, Who pays $20 for a 350 page paperback? Man, you better have a GREAT Publicist. The newest Harry Potter Hardback is a 750 page book and costs $20, and was $35 on the day of issue. See the reality for yourself: http://www.lulu.com/en/includes/calc_retail_inc.php and http://www.lulu.com/help/index.php?fSymbol=set_retail_price
So much for Lulu retail book publishing.. In the end, I chose LightningSource for POD publication- I got a better royalty than BookSurge, better customer service, quicker service, easy submission. A friend initially recommended their services, and he has done very well on Amazon through their distribution package. See http://www.neilslade.com/myown4.html for details How-To-Do-It.
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The main point here being-- if you write a book, you can print it yourself, or get a POD to print it. I printed my own books for years, and finally when I could afford to, I gave up this practice, and will let someone else do it now. But there are distinct traps to avoid, including being misled and being given insufficient instructions to complete a submission process. But if you can market your book-- heck, you can print and bind as you go with nothing more than a few good inkjet printers and a comb binder. I did this for a couple years, and sold a lot of books this way. People want value, and good content. Contrary to what some may think, if your offer a good product, nobody cares about the kind of binding on the book as long as it holds the pages together. And you can sell ONLINE with
NO physical book as well. You can make AUDIO book cassettes and CDs.
These are all options, and THEY ALL WORK. I am qualified to tell you
yes, indeed. This is ONLY the beginning of
being an author. The BIGGEST problem is getting word out, getting
people to buy your book. That's a whole universe to explore at
another time, on another MYOWNPUBLISHING.COM page. Have Fun with your frontal lobes. Neil Slade
http://www.MyOwnPublishing.com
Okay, you've been warned--
but for those who insist on using BookdSurge:
MORE DETAILS ABOUT CONVERTING FILES FOR
BOOKSURGE's $99 EXPRESS CONTRACT:
Deep deep deep
in Acrobat, there is a menu option for modifying how Acrobat
coverts MICROSOFT OFFICE DOCUMENTS into PDF files. If you follow ONLY the directions supplied by BookSurge to prepare your book (with images) without making sure ALL your fonts are embedded in the FONTS tab in the printer driver preferences- including any strays left in the "never embed" dialog box which Booksurge forgot to mention in their directions, and without additionally modifying the settings in Adobe Acrobat (which BookSurge ALSO leaves out in their guide for submission instructions) your book will never meet the BookSurge specifications. Never ever ever ever ever. Its IMPOSSIBLE. I spent FOUR WEEKS finding this out. And BookSurge NEVER gave me a clue how to correct this. Did they think that I would get so frustrated that I would abandon the idea of publishing for $99, and finally throw my hands up and say "UNCLE!!!! Give me the $700 package and you do it for me!!" I would hope not. Do you think I am the only author to run into this problem at BookSurge? Gee whiz.
BookSurge says
"We will print your book, but we take no responsibility if your
images are fuzzy." (I paraphrase here.)
MINUTES.
Ow!
I submitted SEVENTEEN VERSIONS OF MY BOOK, each time rejected by BookSurge for low image resolution and/or missing embedded fonts (see above for that solution). I had to figure it out on my own. Now we all know.
Here's a much easier method, but you need Adobe Acrobat and Distiller to do it:
1) Create your book. 2) FOLLOW THESE DIRECTIONS FOR SETTING UP YOUR ADOBE PDF PREFERENCES 3) Print, and select "PRINT TO FILE" option using Adobe PDF as your "printer" in the printer dialog window. REMEMBER WHERE ITS SAVING TO on your computer. This will create a ".prn" type of file. 4) Open Adobe Distiller. 5) Drag the .prn file you just made into the Distiller window. 6) Voila! There's your PDF.
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