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Lulu.com

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Lulu is a printing company with its headquarters at Morrisville, North Carolina. In addition to printing it also offers online-order fulfillment. The brand name is derived from the concept of a lulu as an old-fashioned term for a remarkable person, object, or idea. The company's CEO is Red Hat co-founder Bob Young.

Authors who publish/print works through Lulu retain the copyrights to such works. Optional services offered by the company include ISBN assignment, and distribution of books to retailers requesting specific titles (returns are not accepted, which limits distribution to physical bookstores). Electronic distribution is also available.

Overview

Lulu Press Inc. is predominantly a self-publishing company, launched in 2003, and based in Morrisville, North Carolina, in the United States. The company CEO is Robert Young, and the president is Gart Davis.

Lulu's ordering-and-publishing system is automated and open; interaction with authors is done exclusively through the Internet, and anyone with access to the Internet may make material available to be ordered from Lulu. There is an additional process to go through and a fee to have material distributed to outlets such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Authors are guided by menus and instructions on the website as they upload files to the site. Material is submitted in digital form for hard publication. Uploaded items that are not distributed beyond Lulu are immediately available for order. However distributed items require the author to first order a draft and to approve it. In either case uploaded files will be published verbatim and unedited within the limits of the technology to do so. A live, online chat-service is usually available to help customers navigate the instructions posted on the website. The author is not assigned a contact person such as an editor. Lulu provides no phone support. Mail and phone contact information is conspicuously absent from their website. This is an experimental approach that reduces support and editing costs and thus provides access to publishing to those who would otherwise not be willing or able to afford a vanity press or find an accommodating conventional publisher.

Lulu's focus is on conventional books, which can be printed in various sizes, in paperback or hardback, and in black-and-white or glossy full-color; however they also publish magazines, calendars, and print publications. Lulu publishes digital media as well, including music CDs, DVD videos, and ringtones. Media type options are available to authors — for example, an author uploading a novel can select a type of binding, layout style, and even among predefined cover art if desired, and can set the amount of author margin desired, though not the final retail price. An author can upload a file in .pdf format (or can choose to have Lulu convert it), and can download and view the uploaded or converted file. [1][2]

Unlike traditional publishers Lulu has no inventory on hand as material is not printed in advance. Instead, after an order is made, it is placed in a queue at a contracted print-on-demand printer [3][4][5], in a system referred to as "POD." Printing takes approximately one to two weeks, after which the finished product is shipped. There can be small variations in published material when the job is moved from one contract printer to another

When a book or project for distribution beyond Lulu's website marketplace is first entered, or when it is revised, the author is required to purchase a draft copy and then approve it. The draft copy goes through the regular order process with approximately one or two weeks delay for printing followed by shipping time. The author may approve the draft by checking a box on the 'project page' for the book, or the author may enter a revision. After entering a revision a new draft copy must be ordered according to the regular order process. This is true whether the revision is one letter, the whole text, or even just the price. This procedure is repeated until a final draft is approved. According to the Lulu website, shipping of the final project (upon order) occurs approximately another six to eight weeks after the final draft is approved, online, by the author. Thus, a book with one revision and one week for shipping, without including any time for the review, may take up to 14 weeks time or more as per the website guidelines.

The retail price for the published item is determined based on printing costs, the author's margin set by the author, and the fee charged by the distributor for distributed items. Printing costs for books are correlated to the page count, paper size, binding type, and color or black-and-white print. The author's margin is partitioned into 80% for the author and 20% for Lulu. It follows that Lulu claims no commission if the work is offered royalty-free. [6][7] It is unclear if Lulu makes money from the printing and distribution portions. As a specific example, a 8 1/2 by 11 conventional black and white 432 page paperback book with $4 author margin shows up on Amazon for $35.95. For distributed items a change in price caused by adjustment of the author's margin is considered as a revision, so after such a change the author must purchase another copy of the book and approve it, as for content revisions.

While Lulu doesn't charge for uploading material, a number of other fee-related services are offered, including ISBN-assignment, cover design, general marketing, and making publications available through Amazon and other online retailers. Lulu also maintains an online store, "Lulu Marketplace," which offers publications for sale on their website at no up-front charge to the author, collects payments, and tracks royalties.[7]

Lulu offers three different levels of distribution services: "Lulu Marketplace," "Published By You," and "Published By Lulu (formerly known as "Global Distribution")." Depending on the level of distribution, Lulu may or may not require exclusive rights. [8]

Licensing

Copyright remains with the author. "Published by Lulu" distribution requires a contract,[9] which may be incompatible with open content, such as GFDL,[10] or Creative Commons licenses. For its other distribution services besides "Published by Lulu," however, Lulu offers to use open content licenses.[11] Contract terms were changed in 2007, and it is not as easy to tell whether the new version is compatible with copyleft; the new version does not explicitly discuss exclusivity, but includes requirements with which the author might not be able to comply if the book was copylefted, since the author would not have control over other people's ability to publish the work independently.

Criticism

UK publications

In September 2006, Lulu came under criticism for changing the terms of its global distribution package and incurring a price rise of around 70% on all books sold in the United Kingdom. [12] Some[who?] authors see this as effectively pricing them out of the UK marketplace.

On September 19, 2006, Lulu authors based outside of the United States received documentation[13] informing them they would be subject to a 30% tax on their royalties gained through sales in the United States. Non-U.S. authors were told by Lulu to apply for exemption from these taxes.[citation needed]

Regarding this issue, the CEO of Lulu, Bob Young, has stated, "You are quite right, we messed up, badly."[14] Lulu states that it has attempted to mitigate the problem, that it has no choice but to follow US tax laws, and that part of the issue has been currency exchange rates.

Wholesale policies

Lulu, unlike most publishers, does not accept returns of unsold books from bookstores. In addition, the wholesale discount is much smaller than most bookstores are accustomed to — as little as 5% at typical quantities of less than a hundred. [15] [16] These facts may make it difficult for authors to have their books carried in bookstores, though they're not an issue for online book sites like Amazon.com. Lulu states that its goal is "to have a million authors selling 100 copies each, rather than 100 authors selling a million copies each."

Lack of full support for open formats

Although Lulu's roots connect it to the open-source software movement, it does not fully support PDF files generated using open-source software; Lulu's policy states that users submitting PDF files for books to be published via Global Distribution must generate them with Adobe Acrobat.

References

  1. ^ Fenton, Howard (2007). "Self-Publish or Perish? The Implications of Digital Book Production". Seybold Report: Analyzing Publishing Technologies. 7 (5): 7–10.
  2. ^ Fawcett, Anne (January 7, 2008). "Save face with a pet project". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2008-04-20. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ Books in Lulu's "Distribution" program are produced by Lightningsource, others by Colorcentric."Lulu Partners With Xerox For On Demand Publishing". Lulu. September 20, 2004. Retrieved 2008-04-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ "Lulu.com en UniversiaKnowledge". El Blog de Enrique Dans. January 15, 2007. Retrieved 2008-04-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Ellen, Joan (December 15, 2007). "Vendors and Suppliers". Lulu forums. Retrieved 2008-04-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ Lovell, Jeremy (December 26, 2006). "A Lulu of an idea". Toronto Star. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ a b Haugland, Ann (2006). "Opening the Gates: Print On-Demand Publishing as Cultural Production". Publishing Research Quarterly. 22 (3): 3–16. doi:10.1007/s12109-006-0019-z.
  8. ^ "What Distribution Services does Lulu offer?". Lulu. Retrieved 2008-04-20.
  9. ^ "Published By Lulu License Agreement". Lulu. April 16, 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ GNU Free Documentation License "GNU Free Documentation License". Free Software Foundation. Retrieved 2008-04-20. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  11. ^ "What kinds of licenses can I put on my work?". Lulu. April 16, 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ Forums Lulu - Lulu.com
  13. ^ Lulu's growth comes with many challenges-taxes, among them. - Adventures in on demand publishing - Lulu.com
  14. ^ Forums Lulu - Lulu.com
  15. ^ Forums Lulu - Lulu.com
  16. ^ Forums Lulu - Lulu.com
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