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3rd April 2008
Karen
Inskip-Hayward
I have written things for as long as I can
remember - stories, articles, poetry,
half-novels, etc. but have found the whole area
of publishing at best daunting and at worst
soul-destroying. I have had some things
published - poems, articles, that kind of thing
- but the whole process is quite negative. You
get rejected repeatedly; it's not great for a
writer's fragile ego. If you do get accepted,
you also sign over your work to someone who
might wish to change it.
So, how does it sound, if you had complete
editorial control over your work? If you could
publish it, edited as you wish, with your own
cover design and everything you would like? It
sounds great, doesn't it?
This is why I joined Lulu - a website where you
can self-publish your work, just as you would
like it to be. You can also buy other people's
work too, of course, but the site does so much,
it's best to look for yourself. I shall
concentrate on detailing my own experiences
about publishing through Lulu.
The first thing I published was a book of my
poems. I have had several published in
magazines over the past few years and wrote to
a publishing house, who basically told me to go
away, get more poems published in more
magazines, then come back in a year. I didn't
want to wait. I had a good amount of poems I
felt were of a high enough standard to publish,
so I did some research and discovered Lulu. I
joined and began the rather complicated process
of preparing my poetry collection for
publication.
To do this, you basically go through an online
wizard, which explains the steps you need to
create your book, pamphlet, calendar or
whatever. Before you start this process, you
need to have the work you want saved in a file
on your computer and you should have proof-read
it for obvious errors (or ask a friend to do
this).
You upload your document and Lulu converts it
to a PDF file. You can then check this looks
okay, then if it does, move on to the next
stages. You choose the type of binding you
want, the size of book, upload a cover (or
choose from the templates on the website),
approve everything and then choose the amount
of royalties you wish to receive per copy sold.
All these are up to you, although some will be
restricted by the amount of pages.
To give you an example of this, I will explain
about the things I have published through Lulu.
My poetry collection 'Petals of Pleasure…
Petals of Pain' consists of forty poems, which
became a thin book with photographic covers,
which feature two of my photos. Having total
control over the content meant I could also
write my own list of acknowledgements and
dedications - so in this, you will find I
mention not only my family, but also people
like Colin Baker, Nadia Comaneci and Helena
Bonham-Carter! This book sold pretty well.
Next, I uploaded twelve of my photos for a 2007
calendar. I chose the best quality in
everything and - even with only a small
commission - it came out as costing around £20
a calendar! I didn't even sell one! It was
ridiculously overpriced, so I deleted that
one.
After that, I published a project, which was
simply for me. You see, you don't have to put
everything up for sale; you can just print out
one copy for yourself, if you wish. That is
what I did here. I published a kind of diary I
had written, through my emails to friends and
family. This was a much bigger document and the
book was large enough to have a good sized
spine, which looked rather professional. I was
the only one to buy this, so I bought it for
cost. This was £4.19 - the amount Lulu says it
costs to print out a copy. The document is
stored on the website and if I wanted to, I
could buy more at the same price.
This year, I have published two things. The
first is a photo book - quite a new idea for
the website. I take a lot of photos and many
people have complimented me on them and
suggested they were good enough to sell, so I
printed out a photo book featuring views of the
country. I entitled it 'England - My
Photographic Views' and this is a large sized
book (8.5" x 11") which sells for £8.05 in
print or £5 in download, netting me £3 and £4
respectively in royalties.
Finally, I published a gymnastics book which is
a mixture of the history of the sport in the
1980s and my memories of it. It's definitely a
niche market, but I managed to get an interview
with four-time Olympic Champion Ecaterina Szabo
of Romania and I got exclusive photos of her
and another famous gymnast for the covers. This
book is a similar size to my diary book. It
sells for £9.74 in print, which nets me £4 per
book.
Royalties are paid out once a month and mine go
straight into my Paypal account. I have only
sold twenty-two copies in total, so you are
unlikely to make your fortune here, but it can
be a nice bit of pocket money. The (small)
income is just a little bonus to me though. The
main advantage of the website is being able to
see my work in print, to have complete
editorial control over it, to design my own
covers and to see people buying the end
product.
There aren't many disadvantages really, just a
few -
• It is an American site, so we Brits have to
pay a bit more for postage and wait a bit
longer for the items to arrive.
• The uploading process can be rather tedious
though. It took me two hours to get my covers
right for the gymnastics book, as the
specifications I had used were different to
those the site wanted.
• They also suggest you order a copy of your
work to check, before you put it up for general
sale - but I hate waiting!
• You have to pay extra for an ISBN number (and
last time I looked, this cost about £80, so I
didn't bother!). Without one, your book can't
be held in libraries or listed on Amazon.
• You have to pay for every copy you want - but
only cost price and you could always buy some,
and then sell them directly at a profit.
Overall, I love this site and intend to
continue using it. It allows you to put your
work out into the wide world and might even get
you noticed by 'established' publishers, if
you're lucky. Personally, I'm not holding my
breath! I'm happy with this and in the next
year or so, I hope to publish my autobiography,
but will only make it available to family and
close friends. It will also be great to leave
this to my children and future
grandchildren.
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