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Lulu now sells EPUB
November 3, 2009 | 2:06 pm
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By Paul Biba
Received this email from Paul Durrant and it should be of interest to anyone who is self-publishing:
The subject is the news. Lulu now allows upload and sale of ePubs. DRM is optional.
Lulu have revised their prices. Lulu used to sell PDFs on a straight 20% margin. Lulu now sell both PDFs and ePubs on the basis of $1.49 + 20% of the remainder.
If you want to add Adobe DRM to your ebook, it costs an extra $0.99 PER SALE.
I suspect that my ePub is one of the first available at Lulu, as I’ve found several teething troubles in their uploading system, including the inability to add a custom cover image due to some faulty sanity checks on image size.
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/desbarollda-the-waltzing-mouse/7867672
They do have a nice facility to upload an ePub sample.
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Comments:
Lulu is doing a great job listening and responding to the needs of customers. A bit slow (Robert Nagle requested the EPUB format from Lulu, in a Lulu forum post in 2007), but ultimately Lulu gets the point.
Lulu will add DRM to your EPUB, but it looks to me that you’ll need to make and upload your own EPUB yourself, if you want to sell EPUB ebooks on Lulu. (Paul Durrant: is that correct?)
There are a few file size requirements, but Lulu does let you make a nice book cover for the ebook’s web page on the Lulu site: Paul D., don’t give up on that, it works. The inside of your ebook is beautifully illustrated, you deserve an attractive cover. (Contact me “off list” if you need a hand with this.)
I’m a big fan of Lulu, but I’m now concerned about the price structure for these ebooks. Previously, Lulu took a straight 20% of each sale (for credit card processing and file delivery). Now they get $ 1.49 plus 20% of the remainder.
In my opinion, that’s too much. I will continue using Lulu for print-on-demand paperbacks, but I will probably move my ebooks elsewhere.
@Brewster Kahle and @Peter Brantley:
BookServer, ebook publishers need you!
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks
Yes, Lulu do not create your ePub for you. You must create your ePub yourself, and then upload to Lulu. There are beginning to be free ePub creation tools – notably Calibre and Sigil.
The cover issue might have been resolved – I’ll check. When I was trying to upload the cover image I have, I got an error message saying that my cover image size was wrong, and it should be at least 0 pixels by 0 pixels, and no more than 0 pixels by 0 pixels!
A great job? I’ve been selling my PDFs for 99 cents. Now I’m going to have to raise the price to more than double! And they didn’t even send us an email to tell us about this.
Phooey on them. I’m not happy with this at all.
Paula: Lulu is a good company.
Maybe those of us who have ebooks for sale right now, will be charged the current rate, the lower rate — the flat 20%.
The new rate could apply only to ebooks created since the DRM option began.
We’ll probably get a Lulu email on this issue very soon.
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks
Lulu.com just shows who the winners are when DRM is involved. I uploaded an EPUB and choose to have Lulu ‘protect’ it using DRM. I set the price to 2 euro (2,94 USD). For each sale I make, I get 8 eurocent while Lulu (and Adobe?) keep the remaining 1,92 euro.
Yes, Pierre, that is a notable disadvantage of DRM. DRM adds to the price of the ebook. In your example, that gives almost every euro and eurocent to the bookseller, and almost nothing to the publisher and author — that is a real tragedy — and perhaps even a crime!
Publishers (who need DRM) then have two choices, and both choices are not good ones. We can raise the price of our ebooks, or we can take a smaller share of the profit.
Another option is to publish without DRM.
The last option, an option for the future:
Use an open-source DRM, that would:
1) Cost nothing for publishers to use; and
2) Be much more friendly to ebook buyers: it would not restrict the use and capabilities of the ebook.
So who will rise up and be a hero of the Epublishing Revolution, and give the world the gift of a free, open-source, and end-user friendly DRM ?
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks
Here is Lulu’s blog post about their new ebook selling program:
http://lulublog.com/2009/11/03/new-lulu-ebooks-are-here/
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks