So Barnes & Noble small press division declined to purchase my book for stocking in their stores (until I get some local or national press coverage basically)…I was sad for a few minutes, but I’m moving on.

One of the things they mentioned in their “rejection” letter was a recommendation to use their self-publishing company which gets the book listed automatically in their stores for customer request (still on-demand vs. on the shelf).

Well I took a look at that option which led me to some other self-publishing locations besides the one I currently use, Booksurge. The first one I found was Lulu. In less than 20 minutes I had my book interior and cover uploaded and available for purchase. I was able to use the same PDF that I used with Booksurge, with only one minor change to the margins. The cover design system was SIGNIFICANTLY easier than Booksurge, because I could do it in their WYSIWYG editor.

With Booksurge I have to wait for them to send me a markup, but with Lulu, I see it right there on the screen. Very impressive.

The big drawback, however, is that if you come in with your own ISBN, you can’t take advantage of ANY of their distribution options beyond the Lulu marketplace. So basically, all you’re doing is listing it for sale in one more place. That is a problem for me, and really doesn’t accomplish much at all since the book is already on amazon.com. (however: I am exploring the Lulu hardcover options, and if the quality is good, I may bring back the hardcover version of Box of Hair: A Fairy Tale, just with a different publisher)

Next I tried Wordclay. This turned out to be a no-go, because you can’t custom design your cover without paying. You can’t even upload your own cover art that you have already designed. You MUST choose from one of their stock covers, which is a showstopper for me. At least with Lulu I could upload my own cover image.

So I guess it’s back to Booksurge again for the next book in the series…this doesn’t bother me TOO much, even though I’ve had a lot of printing issues with them lately and I’m now on my third account manager and second publishing contact. We’ll see how it goes. In the mean time I’ve made a short story available as an ebook download on Lulu. Refer to this post for more information.

This sarcastic entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Books, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.