Print-On-Demand:
An Affordable Publishing Option
by M. LaVora Perry
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Advantages
of Print-On-Demand
If you are thinking about
self-publishing and you don't have a lot ofmoney
to invest, you may want to consider Print-On-Demand (POD). I have found
two affordable ways to utilize this printing method. In both cases, you
mustpresent your work
camera-ready—that is, fully edited and formatted for print.
(Note:
Save your money and time, don't even think about self-publishing a book that has
not been edited). In both cases you decide how much
your royalty will be. In both case e-books can be generated. Turn-around
time for both options range from immediately to less than a month.
Upfront cost range from zero to less than one hundred dollars. (However,
if you intend to print large quantities of books in a single print run, a
great resource is PrintUsa.com a
site that enables global printers to bid on your print job.)
Lulu
One print-on-demand company requires no upfront financial investment to
the printer/co-publisher from you—Lulu.com
(http://www.lulu.com). You
pay Lulu nothing to print your book.
Lulu pays royalties quarterly. They offering a variety
of book sizes and types, including hardback. For paperbacks, Lulu
charges a base set up fee of $4.53 per book plus 2 cents (black and white)
or 15 cents (color) per page. On these orders they will print your
full-color, coated-stock-cover book with one of three bindings: 1) perfect
(individual sheets glued to the cover; typical of mass-produced paperback
books), 2) coil (hole-punched pages connected with plastic coils), or 3)
saddle-stitch (stapled). The binding type depends on the page count and
your specifications. If you want, you can utilize Lulu’s cover templates
at no cost to create your book cover.
Lulu
takes a 20% commission on sales and 25% of your royalty, if you set one.
You pay only for printing books you order. This means if you send
purchasers to Lulu’s site to purchase books directly from Lulu, you
collect a royalty without ever having to pay anything up front. Lulu
offers volume discounts on orders of 26 or more books.
Selling
Lulu Books in Book Stores
In general, when selling your Lulu printed book to retail markets,
the production cost of the book is too high for you to set a royalty that
enables you to offer the book to booksellers at the standard 40% discount.
However, some local and large chain outlet booksellers stock my full
color, Lulu-printed book and accept less than a 40% discount on sales,
which is known as a “short discount” and which enables me to earn a
reasonable profit. Making these bookseller sales was a result of me
diligently promoting the book to the stores, and in some cases
establishing a prior sales record with them with my first book, which was
not produced POD.
Lulu
is best suited for direct orders from individual customers online from
your Web site, in person or via mail order. You can also
market your Lulu printed book to libraries and earn the full profit from
your sales, since libraries do not receive a discount off of the purchase
price the way booksellers do.
Your
book can be available for sale as soon as you upload your content to the
Lulu site.However, if you publish your book in print using Lulu you should purchase
a proofof your book before offering it to the public. Waiting
the 5-14 days for your book to arrive and proofing your sample copy will
delay when you can offer your book for sale, but it is worth the wait to
ensure that your work is presented exactly as you want it to be. You can
download an e-book for free as soon as you upload your content to their
site.
Lightning Source Inc.
The second POD option
explained in this article is Lightning
Source Inc. (LSI) https://www.lightningsource.com.
LSI
is the POD division of Ingram, one of the world's largest wholesalers to
the book market. LSI pays royalties monthly. As of September 2006, LSI
will offer full
color printing. LSI requires a minimum 48 page count for black and white
printing and a minimum of 4 pages for color They take no commission on sales. You have the option of
purchasing your books at regular discounts to resell. They offer full
color covers and a variety of binding options, including coated stock
paperback and case-bound (hard cover). Unlike Lulu, LSI does not sell books directly to the public,
but they will sell to booksellers via Ingram. LSI
Costs
You must set up an LSI account for your title—there is no charge for
doing so. You must pay a one-time-only set up fee consisting of
approximately $50 for each book whose content you submit to them via the
Internet. The fee is slightly higher if you submit your content by other
methods (like via postal mail) and it increases the higher your page
count. You must pay for a proof of your first book only—future books
don't have this requirement, although it is recommended that you obtain
proofs of all of your booksbefore offering them for sale. LSI
proofs costs $30.00 (paperback). Your book is available to order as soon
as you approve your proof. After your proof is generated, there is a
$40.00 fee per each revision to your book’s text or cover.
LSI
offers paperback black and white book binding for 90 cents per unit plus 1.5 cents per page.
Color printing starts at $2.50 per book for 4-16 saddle stitched (stapled)
paperback pages. LSI charges a $1.50 fee per order. Volume discounts begin on orders over 500
books. Hardback and other binding and trim options are also available.
As
an LSI publisher, you must sign a statement declaring yourself to be a
registered business in the state in which you sell books, although LSI
does not check to ensure you are registered. In any case, you are
obligated by law to register yourself as a reselling business in at least
the state in which you reside. Before paying a lawyer to process the
paperwork to do this, check your state's online and/or offline small
business resources. Most likely they have information that will assist you
in completing the required forms your self at no additional cost other
than state fees.
LSI Distribution and Promotion
LSI enables you to obtain worldwide distribution through Ingram, one of
the largest book wholesalers. Due to the wholesale discounts book
distributors require, with LSI if your book is sold via a retailer, you
may get less in royalties than you would when purchasers obtain your book
directly from Lulu. However, with LSI, for an annual fee of $12.00
your title is made easily available to booksellers, wholesalers and distributors worldwide,
including Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Amazon.com and BN.com.
For
an additional $50, LSI will list a description of your book and an image
of its cover in Ingram Advance—a
title listing magazine that is distributed to hundreds of thousands of
book vendors and libraries worldwide. The Advance
listing option is only available when you initially set up a new title for
printing.
ISBN
ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. An ISBN is the
identifying number used by libraries and retail outlets worldwide to
identify the title and publisher of a given book.To print your POD book via LSI in the
U.S.
you must purchase ISBNs from R.R. Bowker
the U.S. ISBN Agency, at the current price of a minimum of 10 for
$249.50
Having an ISBN enables you to be listed in Bowker's Books in Print,
a resource relied upon by booksellers. As part of their standard
services, LSI will imprint your ISBN on the back of your book as a
scanable bar code, known as a Bookland EAN.
If
you use Lulu’s standard service, you must purchase your bar code
yourself from an independent vendor, or obtain software to create you own.
You would then need to imprint the bar code on your book cover image using
an imaging software program like Adobe Photoshop. You can purchase one or
more bar codes online for $10.00 each from various vendors. In addition,
bar code creation software is available at discount prices on E-bay. I
have even found a Web site that offers free bar code creation software.
No
matter which printing method you use, make sure that for each book you
intend to publish, once you’ve purchased your ISBN’s, you go to the
Bowker site (www.bowkerlink.com) to assign a unique ISBN from your list of
10 numbers.
ISBN
and Lulu
Lulu offers two different ISBN options, however, if you can afford it, I
strongly recommend purchasing your own. The Lulu options mean that Lulu
will be officially listed as the publisher of your book, not your
company. In addition, although the cost of using Lulu's ISBN service is
less than purchasing your own in the short run, if you intend to publish
more than one title, purchasing your own ISBNs will ultimately save you
money.
Copyright With both Lulu and LSI authors
retain full copyright for their work. Neither company applies for
government copyright registration on an author's behalf—the
author/publisher is responsible for doing
so. Registration affords
authors protection in the event that others attempt to claim their work.
To obtain detailed copyright information and the required forms from the
U.S.
copyright office, visit the
U.S.
government Copyright Office Web
site.
Library
of Congress Catalogue Listing If
you want your book to be eligible for consideration for inclusion in the
database of the U.S. Library of Congress, before your book is
published, you must apply for a Library of Congress
Preassigned Control Number (PCN), which is typically placed on a
book's copyright page, on the reverse of the title page. Library of
Congress Catalogue listing information and title submission forms are
available online.
If
you publish books using the off set printing method and you have published
three titles by authors other than yourself, you are eligible to obtain a
CIP number (Cataloguing in Publication) for books published by your
company. CIP data is a bibliographic record of your book that is to be
placed on the book’s copyright page. You must apply for a CIP number
several months prior to publication. Books printed POD are ineligible for
CIP numbers, however they are eligible for PCNs. Library of Congress
Catalogue listing information and title submission forms are available here.
Emergency
POD If you need books printed faster
than either Lulu or LSI can do, 48hrbooks.com
can have books ready to ship in 48 hours, once you approve the proof. They
do not charge a set up fee; they do have a minimum requirement of 50 books, however. FedEx Kinkos
provides 24-hour service and will print one book at a time, but their set
up fee can be high and they do not retain set-up data. This means if
you return to print the same book at a later date, you will have to pay
the set up fee all over again.
-M. LaVora Perry
M. LaVora Perry is the co-author of Teen Sisters
Health--A Body, Mind, & Spirit Wellness Guide for Girls of Color,
Linda Bradley, MD, co-author (Cleveland Clinic Press, 2008), and
the author of Taneesha Never Disparaging, a humorous juvenile novel
(Wisdom Publications, 2008). Visit her online at mlavoraperry.com
or email her at mlavoraperry<AT.mlavoraperry.com
(replace <AT> with @ in email address).
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