Lulu is very easy to work with
by Debbie Eades
(Cincinnati, Ohio)
Stories about volunteers who drive homeless dogs to rescues and new homes every weekend
It took me about three years off and on to finish the book I wrote about dog rescue. I looked into several vanity presses and Print on Demand publishers. I actually learned about LULU from our local newspaper's book section and checked them out.
The terms were very good and lets the author retain all rights to the work, and if you ever get a big-time publisher, you take the work with you. If you buy the Published by Lulu package, which I did, they get you the ISBN and get you set up on Amazon, Barnes and Noble,etc. and your book is distributed through Lightning Source and Ingram. It is only $99. The going price I had before that was about $500 at Infinity Publishing.
LULU helps you set up retail price as well as royalties - all very easy. You approve the final draft copy before it is sent to press. It took me about five drafts before I had corrected all the typos and grammatical errors. The day it appeared on Amazon, March 7, 2007, I took my whole family out to dinner! I was FINALLY a published author!! Very exciting.
I have had very little trouble with LULU. I do not like the fact that they have no 800 number where you can talk to a live person, only email and live chat. I had one issue where they suddenly changed the font size on my front cover and it looked AWFUL. I tried to get someone to correct it for 3 weeks. No telling how many books were shipped that way. But once they did contact me and fix it (their mistake, not mine) they compensated me by sending me 20 FREE copies with the correct front cover book.
Their community forums are good for connecting with others who used them to publish their book and gives you great advice on marketing and other issues. I would recommend LULU if you are considering self publishing a book. I am very happy with how it turned out.
Visit Debbie's page at Dogs Deserve Better.
