Lulu, CreateSpace, Lightning Source.. Oh my!

Yeah. So many choices. So many things to do.

I’m still researching and researching on where and who to print my books. Do I want to print locally? Have the books sitting here in my house and deal with all the labels and shipping and packaging? Do I want to use a Print-On-Demand company…but not to publish it. Just to print.

I’ve first scratched off Xlibris, iUniverse, AuthorHouse, etc, because of the upfront fees, and I’ve already put in the money for what they charge for editor, cover design, ISBN, etc. Plus, If I was going to go with some of their packages, I might as well have the book printed locally and ship it out myself, which might equal the same amount as the packages.

I’ve wavered around Lulu, CreateSpace, Lightning Source, and Booksurge(which is Createspace as well, or also just owned by Amazon?). I hear a lot of great things about LuLu, of course, but, again, to sell a book with no upfront fees forces the book’s price very high. Who wants to buy a $25.00 book? And Lightning Source has the Ingram edge, other places to distribute your book to, and CreateSpace only has its store and Amazon.

I’ve also learned that if I wanted to make some updates to the book, for some reason, Lightning Source charges an arm and leg, while CreateSpace is considerably lower. So some people have created the design and book on CreateSpace and moved them to Lightning Source since they use the exact file format on some paper weight/styles. Then there’s the “hassle” of working with Lightning Source as an independent author, yet in the long run, you get back more royalties.

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.

Thus, it looks like people use multiple places to have their books printed and available.

And, as you can tell, Self Publishing is a lot of out-of-pocket expenses. But, like I said before, I spent $22,000 on wedding and honeymoon with someone I love, so why not spend some bucks on something I love.

When I figure out where I want to go and what I want to do…you’ll be the first to know.

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.