Dear Book Writing Friends,

I have been making my entire living for about seven years solely on self-publishing my books on brain and behavior science, on my music CDs, on my films, and recently on my book on automotive painting-- a happy accident that came from a hobby of restoring my 1965 Lotus Elan (see Adventures In Lotus Land, and Fun With Body Putty
 

Here's the method I used for publishing my very popular book on Car Painting

"Easy Paint A Car Pro Yourself"

1) I wrote the book.

2) I created a very detailed and content rich web site (above link)

3) I then published as follows:



As previously noted on previous pages http://www.neilslade.com/myown3.html

-- Lulu is great when you sell on Lulu Marketplace (their own site), but completely inappropriate, and not at all practical if you go retail- their costs are just too high and your take-home profit will be very marginal.

I tried for FIVE WEEKS to get my illustrated black and white interior book published through BookSurge-- to very disappointing results. Not only do they make their submissions very difficult, but if you have illustrations, they don't even give you the correct instructions-- and it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to submit your book to meet their guidelines following their guide. I've noted this on my website with the missing pieces they leave out at http://www.neilslade.com/myown3.html

When I finally got my proof back from Booksurge, it looked terrible-- printing smudges throughout and the images, despite their submission guidelines, despite me finally adjusting to meet their guidelines- the images looked dreadful.  Initially Booksurge was tempting because they promised a flat 25% royalty from retail sales- but after seeing the book they made, I wouldn't sell their version for anything.

Finally I returned to LightningSource, the original contact I had coming from a friend who self-published a book on Medical School Entrance Exams. I didn't go with them because BookSurge promised a higher royalty, and gave you an ISBN with your setup fee. In the end, the Lightning Source Royalty was actually nearly 30% of the retail-- MORE than BookSurge. I make just over $5 on a $15.95 retail book.

This isn't as much as a Lulu Marketplace royalty (nearly 50%), but Lightning Source gets me a listing on Amazon-- and that's the strategy here. Many Lulu Marketplace customers don't buy on Lulu, they go to Amazon after they see a book on Lulu. And, Amazon, even though I really hate this-- people are conditioned and programmed to buy stuff there-- the audience and market is huge. So the experiment for the next few months after my book is listed on Amazon, is to see if this causes a dramatic increase in sales beyond what my excellent sales on my own web site create  http://www.EasyPaintYourCar.com
also see http://www.lulu.com/neilslade

When I received my proof from LightningSource, it was very quick in coming, and looked very good, and had the brightest white cover of all the three publishing companies I tried. The quality of the interior was excellent as well.


The trick for making LightningSource a bit easier is this:

1) Follow the Lulu instructions for embedding fonts and making a robust PDF file.
(The instructions are also on my page http://www.neilslade.com/myown3.html  i.e.,
create your book, then convert to PDF using Adobe DISTILLER)

2) Submit your book to Lulu with DISTRIBUTION for retail. This costs you $50, but you get an ISBN that belongs to YOU (Don't choose the LULU Distribution where THEY own the ISBN).

3) You can create your cover art easily with any program, and submit separate front and back covers. Lulu will then create a SPINE for you. You can also use the Lulu generic cover designs if you are incapable of doing cover graphics.

This is a bit easier than making a "one piece cover" (front, back, and spine together). LULU will actually place your ISBN on the back cover- nice! After they do this, they create a one piece cover with spine lettering that you can then download to your own computer, then upload to LightningSource. NEAT!

LightningSource CAN USE THE SAME ISBN than you bought from LULU (providing you were smart and got the $50 package where YOU are assigned the ISBN.)

4) After Lulu Makes the one piece cover and gives you the ISBN, then CANCEL the project (delete project), but upload all the stuff to LighningSource. It will cost you a little over $100 for the submission and the proof, although this may vary some with the book length.

5) You may save all the information, and then republish a new revision on LULU using the files already uploaded on your LULU account, but ONLY sell on Lulu Marketplace, and get more royalties if you sell there, and also get more web coverage and another search engine result by also being on LULU.

Have Fun!
 

MyOwnPublishing.com Back to the Home page

 

Other pages of Interest- Your support is appreciated- thanks- Neil