Book Publication Journey Continues

Posted by Jerry Lopper Nov 21, 2007

In the last entry I considered several publishing choices. I've since made the decision that enables me to go full speed ahead.

For my purposes, given how I plan to market and promote the book, I've decided to stick with Lulu, the print on demand publisher I used for my first book, Jump for Joy, Clearing the hurdles to an easy life.

Lulu charges nothing up front. I can upload my formatted document, use a stock cover, and incorporate moderate personalization without spending a penny. As author, I can purchase copies at Lulu's manufacturing cost. I can even buy only one copy for proofing or to display for my friends to envy. (It really is a high to see your name as author of a real book.) Lulu offers a market place, or online shop, where others can purchase the book at a price you set.

Registration at Lulu requires only a name and email address, no credit card is required until you purchase something. Since I am still registered from publishing my last book, I jumped immediately to the help section. This is a rich resource set up as a series of FAQ documents. There's an FAQ for every major segment of the process, from formatting content to buying the final product, marketing the finished book, and everything in between.

I decided on a 6 X 9 size (trade paperback), perfect bound (pages glued at the spine), black and white inner content, and full color cover from Lulu's free supply. Rather than set up all the document formatting myself, I downloaded their 6 X 9 Word document template, which gave me a family of recommended font styles, margins, gutter size, header and footer design, and more.

Now it's time to start writing. We'll see how that's going in the next chapter....