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

[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.