My first book, The Portal Between, is self published through Lulu.
This is how it works.
You, the writer/creator/author create your work. You put all the graft in, you commit your words to the screen and save it carefully in several different places. You work on it, rewrite and edit it. You nurture this glorious creation of yours and a friend tells you that it really should be published. So you get your wonderful manuscript ready and start approaching conventional publishers.
They all turn you down, not because your work is rubbish or won’t sell. That may be the case but all too often it’s because a large publishing house won’t take the risk on a new and unproven writer, many agents won’t either. Smaller companies may simply not have the budget available.
You may only want a few copies for friends and family, maybe someone has written down memories or tales from childhood that want to be preserved. A nice properly bound copy would be lovely.
Lulu is wonderful. You do all the work. You get your manuscript ready, edit it yourself and sort out the layout, choose font, spacing, number of pages. Easy right? No. Hard work actually and it’ll take several attempts to get it how you want it. Lulu doesn’t help at all with this, if there’s loads of typo’s you have to spot them, grammar errors, continuity issues – all your problem. Worth doing? Oh yes. So, you have your document all ready on the computer and you’re ready.
First create an account on Lulu. It’s easy and it’s free, just go to “First time visitor” and follow the instructions. You can have your own little shop on there if you want too – mine is Here, feel free to wander in. Once you have an account you can start to publish your work.
A few choices need to be made first though. Do you want hard cover or paperback? Perfect bound or coil? Dust jacket or casewrap? And a cover too! Do you have some artwork or a picture you want on the front of your book?
While you’re thinking on those I’ll go work on my Nano for this year. Check back in a day or so for the next bit on Lulu and self publishing ….
