The Lulu diaries

John Morrison has been flirting with a new online friend, and has two books to prove it.

Lulu and I had a brief fling last week, but it may lead to something more serious. Please don’t ring up my wife to tell her – just allow me to explain. It was the editor of UK Writer, a sophisticated man of the world, who suggested I should sample the online siren’s charms.

I’ve published two non-fiction books with mainstream publishers and a novel under my own steam, so I’m not exactly a blushing virgin. But publishers require long and careful courtship; like Victorian maidens they won’t step out with gentlemen they don’t know, and their long term relationships are often never consummated.

Lulu, by contrast, is a new girl on the block and she doesn’t expect to be showered with expensive gifts and dinners before she delivers the goods.

How long would it take me to get to know her? I decided to start straight after breakfast, only pausing to put the ingredients for a loaf into the bread machine before going to my computer. So here are my uncensored Lulu diaries.

08.45: Switch on breadmaker. I use a sourdough mixture which I keep in the fridge but add a small pinch of instant yeast to help it rise better. Am I cheating?

09.05: Log on to lulu.com and read the online tour. I’ve never been one for deferred gratification, so I set myself the task of compiling and publishing a book in a single day.

09.15: I think I understand what it’s all about. “Publish And Sell Easily Within Minutes.” “No Setup Fees.” “No Minimum Order.” “Keep Control Of The Rights.” I set up an account with a password but nobody asks for my credit card details.

09.25: Lulu offers me the chance to publish a hardback, a paperback, a calendar, a dissertation, a photobook, a DVD or a CD, or just an electronic download. To keep my first experiment simple, I decide to compile a 32-page colour photobook of a recent day out on the Farne Islands. I choose the title Puffin Island and decide that 32 pages will be about right. I open the publishing wizard and start to upload my pictures from my computer.

09.50: Each picture takes about a minute on my broadband connection, but there’s a glitch. My photos seem to be held in a queue but I’m not sure why. I save my first dozen, go forward to the next step and then go back, starting a new upload session. It works!

10.15: I finish uploading 30 pictures and move on to layout and caption writing.

11.30: I complete layout and captions, but I now realise I need some words to fill the blank pages. I save my file online and pause.

11.35: I take the dough out of breadmaker and knead it. I place the wholemeal loaf in a baking tin and cover with a plastic bag.

11.50: Back at the computer, I try to make some text to fill the blank pages.

12.05: Lulu is performing site maintenance.

12.10: I have written a test page using Serif PagePlus (less expensive than Adobe) and try to upload it as a PDF to a blank page. It doesn’t work. I read the instructions again and realise that because this is a photobook, my text pages will have to pretend to be photographs. I turn my text files into JPEGs and upload three text pages and a back cover, including the Black Pig Books imprint under which I published my novel. I tell Lulu to move to the next stage and convert the whole book into a PDF. Time for lunch.

13.55: I download the completed PDF to check what it looks like. It’s fine except for one garbled picture caption.

14.10: I fix the caption and upload again, doing another PDF conversion, then download again. This time it looks okay.

14.18: I complete the process by adding an ISBN (from my own list, although Lulu can supply one for me if I prefer) and I still don’t have to pay anything. I choose to keep the file private for the time being, but I order one copy for myself. The cost is £5.83 and postage within the EU costs only £1.50. I’m promised delivery within 3-5 days.

14.25: I check the dough. It’s still rising. Publishing is faster than baking.

15.00: I realise my romance with Lulu has progressed quicker than I expected. The bun is already in the oven, so to speak, though I will have to wait for delivery. I decide to tackle another book, this time a one-act play about Noel Coward which I wrote a couple of years ago. Perhaps a neatly bound playscript of A Kick In The Vortex will look better on a producer’s slush pile than a bundle of A4 sheets? I examine the choice of paperback formats, only to find that the standard UK size for playscripts isn’t available. I opt for something larger. Lulu will convert my Word document into a print-ready PDF, but I have to reduce the page size first to match the format. I knock the Word file into shape, add a title page with ISBN and Black Pig logo, and realise that the play will just fit into a 32-page book, so I upload it to Lulu and convert it to a PDF, then check the results.

15.55: My sourdough loaf has risen nicely so I put it in the oven. I stand and watch it for half an hour, then take it out. Instant gratification.

16.30: I tackle the front and back cover.Ideally I would like a picture of Noel Coward next to my title, but Lulu’s picture licensing deal with the Getty archive isn’t quite up and running yet, and I can’t find a decent copyright-free image of him on the web, so I opt for a plain front cover to save time. The back cover is easier. I compose a blurb for the play and add a Black Pig logo and a small photo of myself.

18.00: I press the button to complete and order by credit card one copy for £2.92 plus £1.50 postage. My delicious sourdough loaf was half eaten by the time A Kick In The Vortex arrived in the post within the advertised 3-5 days. It’s pretty good. It has my logo on it rather than Lulu’s logo (that’s my choice) and if I want to put it on sale through Lulu, I can do so, after correcting one or two minor typos in the text.

Profit margin

I can set the profit margin and Lulu will take 20% of that. So if I add £2 to the printing cost and charge £4.92, Lulu will earn 40 pence. A 250-page paperback novel will cost around £5 to print, but with print-on-demand (POD) technology, the price stays the same however many copies are ordered.

To sell through Amazon, the pricing formula is slightly different. Because of a technical glitch with one of my pictures, Puffin Island took a bit longer, but the book arrived by courier the day after it was dispatched from the printer in Spain. I’m impressed by the quality of the printing.

Lulu.com is the brainchild of a Canadian software entrepreneur named Bob Young, who still owns the company outright. It began in North America, has its HQ in North Carolina and has been operating in Europe for just over a year. Carol Barnes of its London office tells me it now has dedicated websites in the UK, Spain, France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. It outsources its printing to various POD firms in the UK, Spain and elsewhere.

“As of now (early August) we have about 30,000 published authors in the UK. We have lots more registrations than that. Although this includes some who have just done calendars and photobooks, the majority have published books.” The number of titles published worldwide through Lulu is now growing at 7,000 a week and is in the hundreds of thousands.

My photobook was printed in Spain, while the play was printed in the UK. The site now has just over a million registered users. Lulu is careful to describe itself as a technology company, not a publisher. It isn’t going to put conventional publishers out of business, any more than my baking skills will close down the Hovis factory. What I liked most about it was that its software was simple, robust and easy to use.

Don’t attempt it without a broadband connection and you may need help if your computer knowledge is minimal. But for any writer with average keyboard skills, the advantage over other self-publishing sites such as Authorhouse is that it charges no fee upfront.

Hurdles

Publishing has many stages, and Lulu.com will help you leap over a couple of the crucial hurdles – but not all. Typesetting and book design are skilled crafts, even in the digital age, and your book probably won’t look as good as the ones in bookshops. Digital printing is of high quality, but not as good as the best litho printing. The economics of POD only make sense in small numbers, and Lulu is not a solution for those who want to sell their books in commercial quantities into Waterstone’s. But it makes perfect sense for a playwright or TV writer who wants to turn a favourite script into a calling card, or to publish collected scripts in book format.

Indeed, the possibilities are endless. You can turn your wedding photographs into a photobook, send your aunt in Canada a book of your recipes, print and bind copies of your play so that the actors can dispense with their A4 manuscripts, or send out advance proof copies of your novel to readers. My prediction is that over the next five years the verb ‘to Lulu’ will catch on in the same way as ‘to Google’ has in the last five. The stapled printout on A4 white paper may go the way of the typewritten carbon manuscript of 50 years ago.

What a lady! I can see that my flirtation with Lulu has only just started.

John Morrison is the author of the satirical novel Anthony Blair Captain of School (blackpigbooks.com)

This article first appeared in the Guild's magazine, UK Writer (Autumn 2007)