Lulu Blog

Lulu has been selected as a finalist by the editors at Webware.com, a CNET site, for the 2009 Webware 100 Awards! The Webware 100 Awards honor the people’s choice for best sites and services on the web, so we’re all very excited here, and we’re hoping you can help us win in the Social & Publishing category.

This year’s process of selecting the Webware 100 started with more than 5,000 qualifying Web 2.0 services nominations, was narrowed down to 300 finalists selected by Webware editors, and will continue with a public voting period beginning March 31.  Last year, nearly 2 million votes were cast to determine the winners.

Here is how you can help – support Lulu by voting in the Webware 100!  Simply click the image to the left, and vote in their online poll. Thank you for your help!

Over the years we have received a number of questions about why someone might choose self-publishing over a more traditional method and vice-versa. I’ve outlined some of the benefits self-publishing offers authors, as well as some obstacles self-publishers face to give everyone an idea of what they can reasonably expect.

The Advantages of Self-Publishing

• Your work will be published. As you are self-publishing your work, you know it will be in print and you can hold a copy in your hands.

• You keep all of your rights. Traditional publishers will almost always require that you give up the rights to your work if you sign a contract. In contrast, self-publishing almost always allows you to retain your rights.

• You control the production aspects of your book. You decide what your book will look like, how much it will cost, what formats it will be available in, and more.

• No  long-term contracts. Most self publishing options will not involve you signing any long-term contracts. As such, you have the option of taking your book or other material somewhere else. You can always decide to try traditional publishing if you aren’t happy with self-publishing or if your needs exceed what self-publishing can handle.

• Turn-around time. Typically the turn-around time for self-publishing is much shorter than traditional publishing. This can obviously vary, but with some options taking as little as a week (and in few cases even shorter!) the turn-around is often within a couple of weeks at the most.

• You get paid higher margins per book and you can often get paid more quickly.

• You can create a second edition of a book or correct errors much more easily.

The Disadvantages of Self-Publishing

• It is difficult to get shelf space in a brick-and-mortar store like Barnes & Noble if you self-publish.

• You have to handle all, or almost all, your own marketing.

• You pay any upfront costs. This could include copies of your book, editing, cover design or any number of other aspects.

• Some people still stigmatize self-publishers.

Is Self Publishing For Me?
We recommend you look over the materials we have provided, evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of self publishing, and make your own informed decision. Self-publishing isn’t the right option for everyone, so think about what you’re trying to accomplish and decide whether self-publishing fits those needs.

At Lulu, we strive to listen to our customers and respond to their issues. One of the things we have consistently been hearing from our users are concerns about the cost of shipping internationally. As such, I wanted to address some of these concerns, and assure you that we’re doing our best to resolve them in the best possible way.

Unfortunately, the situation with international shipping prices being as high as they are is the result of several known issues. One of these issues is that, in October, we switched mail providers and in that transition lost some of our lower cost international shipping choices. In addition, we had been absorbing  a lot of cost in international shipping and had to increase our charges to match. The combination of these two events resulted in some of the prices users are currently seeing. To resolve the situation, we rolled out an economy shipping option for international users that, while a little more expensive than the previous cost users may have been seeing, was much more reasonable. Unfortunately, this option does not have tracking associated with it, which we know has caused issues for some of our customers.

We’ve also seen confusion regarding where the book is shipping from. In most cases, the higher shipping prices are only occurring in situations where an item is being shipped from the US to another country. At this time we have printers in  4  countries and some of them have limitations on the binding types, trim sizes, and types of products they can print. As such, there are cases where an order can only be shipped from a printer in the US, resulting in higher prices.  We are actively working to reduce the number of products that have to be shipped overseas.

Finally, there are also situations where our system stores the shipping preferences chosen from your last order, resulting in a situation where the default shipping method is not the least expensive option. This can be corrected by changing the shipping method before ordering, but it is not always obvious that this is an option.

We apologize for any inconvenience these issues have caused, and we are striving to improve your purchase experience and provide you with affordable and effective global shipping. We are currently looking at rolling out  solutions  over  the next  several months and we will keep you updated with information as we finalize the details. In the meantime, we recommend that you follow Wil Wheaton’s advice, and offer both an electronic version and create a “World Edition” of your book. The World Edition should be softcover and should be in one of our International sizes (6×9, 6.625×10.25, 4.25X6.875, 9×7, Royal, Crown Quatro, or A4) to ensure that it won’t be shipped from the US.