Looks like self-publishing's a no go as well.

[avevale_intelligencer]

So, just for the ducks of it, I gathered three of my not-long-enough-to-be-novels too-long-to-be-short-stories stories--The Sallow Man, The Shop and the Truesingers one--together into one two-hundred-page MS, went to lulu.com, and priced it up.

Cheapest possible option, best part of seven quid per book. No way I can make anything on top of that. No way anyone would buy it anyway.

It's nice, I suppose, to know that I was right to put them up on the site for nothing, as that seems to be the only way anyone is going to get to read them. I just hope they're being enjoyed.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Er, have you looked at the price of books recently? GBP6.99 for most of them for a mass market paperback with around 100 (not 200) pages. 'Trade' p/b around 10 pounds. (I'm talking about shelf price, not the massive discounts places like Amazon can get, often on US imports where they are cheaper anyway.)

No, you're not going to have a massive profit, but then authors hardly ever do get that much per book once the publishers have taken their cut. It depends whether you want to get them "out there" in hard copy (because some of us want to read comfortably in bed, not at a screen).

Oh, and some of us would indeed buy your books at that price. The nice thing about Lulu is that since they only print on demand you don't actually have to pay them for a 'run' of a thousand or more books which they then don't sell.

I can tell you that you have at least one guaranteed sale -- me. Do that book at anything up to 15 pounds in p/b (I'll go more if you do it as hardback) and I'll buy it. The same for Austin (as I recall that is novel-length) and for a collection of the other Nyrond stories. It will be a darn sight cheaper than trying to print them out and have them bound myself (limit on that is 64 pages, and that's pushing the lmits of the stapler)...

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, Paul Cornell's "Something More" not too long ago was 6.99 for 472 pages, so I still think you're getting a raw deal...

...still. I'll see if I can come up with an amusing cover...

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Yes, the price doesn't go up in a linear fashion (100 page ones don't sell for 1.50, not for a long time), and not even directly connected with other inflation indices. Or much of anything else that I can see, I've had some at around 200 pages for 7.99 and some at 5.99 in the last year (the US/UK market conversions really skew the results; it's always been 'interesting' how a book published in the UK and sold in the US, incurring shipping costs and at least sales tax (possibly import duty as well) still sells there for less (taking into account the conversion rate) than in the UK, while US books have often been re-labelled at the $=pound rate; the latter no longer happens as much, making US imports often cheaper now than the UK versions).

[aunty_marion]

Grrr, it's the damn dollar/pound parity thing still around. I've signed up for a copy of Sam Storyteller/copperbadge's Nameless, which he mentioned would cost a minimum of a little under nine dollars - so he's pricing it at (probably) $10 to start with. Trade-size paperback, and 216 pages (208 of which are text); but he said that the plain paperback version would be $6.58.

Oh, and needless to say I'd be buying it. Even if - as I said to Sam - it means a week when I simply don't eat as much.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Think of this as what retail types call a "loss leader"--a freebie to get people aware of and interested in your stuff, that will pay off down the road as you get more stuff published and people who liked the first one will pay for later ones.

And add me to the list of those who would buy.

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

and me at anything up to a tenner.

[jahura.livejournal.com]

On my bookshelf in the living room is a second edition of The Little Minister that I searched every used bookstore (it hasn't been in print since the 30s) I came across for fifteen years and for which I paid forty dollars. Ten for yours is nothing. Where can I get it? Extra for autographed copy? No problem.

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

I would buy it. And not just for me - copies for my parents, too.

Probably up to a tenner.

[occams_pyramid]

You may want to check this page before deciding
http://www.sfwa.org/BEWARE/printondemand.html

It does mention lulu, but not as one of the scam sites.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, that's depressing. Oh well, too late now.

[aunty_marion]

Well, as the site says - Lulu is one of the better ones. And I refer you again to my learned friend copperbadge's Delicious bookmarks for his Extribulum Press venture. He's using Lulu too. Yes, you don't reckon to sell as many, necessarily, as a 'real' publisher might; OTOH, there won't be piles of remainders cluttering up BookWorld or whatever they're called for the next 20 years.... *g*

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Remember that the SFWA article is written for people who want or expect to Make Big Bucks out of writing, either through self-publishing directly or by hoping that by self-publishing the big publishers will get interested. You aren't in that category as far as I can see (in fact you tend to start with the opposite premise so you may be pleasantly surprised). For instance: "The average book from a POD service sells fewer than 200 copies" -- if you sell that I suspect you'll be pleased (I won't be surprised) rather than disappointed.

They do also say that Lulu are one of the better ones, and at least two SF authors I know have books through Lulu (Diane Duane, with the first of the Raetian Tales, and Peter Morwood with reprints of Greylady and Widowmaker).

And of course what they don't say is the problems which authors have with big publishers, like cancelling the reprint of a large series after two books (Ace; Lee and Miller), or deciding that they wouldn't publish a new book by an author because "the last one didn't sell enough" (they had done a short run, and all of those had been sold, many pre-sold, but they then came up with the catch-22 "we won't reprint or go to paperback because it didn't sell enough" -- James White), or deciding to not reprint but hanging on to the rights so that they can't be published anywhere else. Or for that matter finding that a large proportion of your books have been 'stripped' -- the covers removed and sent back to the publisher for refunds and the rest thrown away -- just because it had been on the shelves for a few weeks. They make a big thing about some of the POD companies being bought by competitors, but don't mention that the same happens with big publishers as well. In short, they come across to me as being heavily biased towards the 'conventional' model.

[hurdle1gal.livejournal.com]

The Shop was an excellent series, and since I like your writings, I would like to try and read some other stuff I haven't seen posted in here or on the forums. I have some other friends who are real bibliophites (?) and hopefully I can interest them via word-of-mouth.

So in short, let me know when it's up for sale, and I'll try to get a copy. :-)

[hurdle1gal.livejournal.com]

Also, what ages would your stories be considered "appropriate"?

[keristor.livejournal.com]

It's up now.

Ages, my estimate. There is no graphic sex or violence (beyond the level in "The Shop"), although there is certainly mention of 'adult' matters (as in a certain amount of romance) and some grimness in places as one might find in a murder mystery novel. The use of language (e.g. level of vocabulary; I don't mean "bad language" because I don't recall any of that) I would place around the same level as say Tolkien, C.S. Lewis or Randall Garrett for understandability (that is to say that I would have been happy reading them by age 12 at least). In general I would say that they would not be unsuitable for teenagers, although they aren't "young adult" books in the sense the publishers generally use the term (most of the protagonists are adult, not teenage or younger).

In film classification terms I'd say PG to <a href='http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/c_12.php>PG-12</a>.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Sorry, HTML markup error. The end of that last sentence should have read: "to PG-12"...