I agree with you that Lulu are the equivalent of a CD pressing house (I would compare them with CD Baby for instance). Some of the others, though, aren't, they do take your money as a 'fee' for publishing your books and their contract terms can be definitely bad (keeping publishing rights, for instance; Lulu expressly say that if you want them to stop publishing your book they will do it but others apparently expect the rights in perpetuity; not necessarily exclusive but it seems that you can't take your book away from them). It's the bad ones which have given the whole industry a bad name in some places.
However, it's not quite true that musicians who 'self-publish' are treated with the same respect as those with large record companies. Have you tried to get your CDs into high-street shops (not specialist or small shops, I mean the large chains like HMV)? Most of them won't even look at them unless they come through a 'known' distributor, and those won't usually look at CDs unless they come from a 'known' label. The same with a lot of radio stations. It's much the same situation, except that independent music publishing has been around for longer than self-published printed books so it's a little easier to get heard. The quantities tend to be bigger as well, even for filk selling 200 copies of a CD of any decent standard is not at all unusual whereas the figures quoted by the SFWA indicate that for POD titles the average is well below 200 (Lulu are quoted as saying that they want a million authors selling 100 books each rather than 100 authors selling a million each).
But a lot of the SFWA article came across to me as an elitist "we like it the way it is because then we are in the few Published Authors and you plebs aren't". The publishers (and the big record companies) like it as well, because if there weren't those pesky independents they would have a captive market. That's the same reason that they belittle people who publish on the net, especially free, it undercuts their importance.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 04:08 pm (UTC)However, it's not quite true that musicians who 'self-publish' are treated with the same respect as those with large record companies. Have you tried to get your CDs into high-street shops (not specialist or small shops, I mean the large chains like HMV)? Most of them won't even look at them unless they come through a 'known' distributor, and those won't usually look at CDs unless they come from a 'known' label. The same with a lot of radio stations. It's much the same situation, except that independent music publishing has been around for longer than self-published printed books so it's a little easier to get heard. The quantities tend to be bigger as well, even for filk selling 200 copies of a CD of any decent standard is not at all unusual whereas the figures quoted by the SFWA indicate that for POD titles the average is well below 200 (Lulu are quoted as saying that they want a million authors selling 100 books each rather than 100 authors selling a million each).
But a lot of the SFWA article came across to me as an elitist "we like it the way it is because then we are in the few Published Authors and you plebs aren't". The publishers (and the big record companies) like it as well, because if there weren't those pesky independents they would have a captive market. That's the same reason that they belittle people who publish on the net, especially free, it undercuts their importance.