
Lulu.com - My experience with self publishing - dottertrotter
http://litlift.com/lulu-a-review
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T_S_
The cost of distributing books is plummeting. The relative value of editorial
process is going up, but we haven't noticed yet.

Instead we are witnessing the literary equivalent of Gresham's Law. Gresham's
Law is the recognition that whenever more than one type of currency is legal
tender, (e.g. gold and silver) the more valuable one disappears from
circulation.

Now a "book" is like currency in that it is a token of its valuable contents.
Some are better than others, but people buy a book without fully evaluating
the quality. Indeed that is the reader's job.

"Old publishing" may be dying but a side effect is that any old manuscript can
now be published. The downside is that the "good" books will be harder to find
in this democratized world. Eventually we will have to re-create the editorial
process of old publishing on top of the new distribution channels. Then
readers will associate some e-publishing brands with quality--even more so
than today. But it hasn't happened yet.

~~~
mkramlich
Some of my startup ideas are based partly on the expectation that trusted
curators will become more in demand in the future in any area where the
Internet is disrupting like you described.

~~~
T_S_
Makes sense. Obviously books are an area where search alone won't cut it.
Knowing that a book exists and knowing you would like to read it are very
different questions. How do you identify the boundary between search and
trusted curators? How do you integrate trusted curators with collaborative
filtering? How do you filter out books filled with rookie mistakes?

A similar issue is being worked out in news. Most people would still rather
read the NY Times and WSj rather than wikinews. The reason: editorial input.
Wikinews is a noble effort but has not got the magic formula for editorial
control.

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zoba
As a former intern at Lulu I'm very happy to see a post on HN about it. Lulu
has come a very long way, in many aspects, but specifically in print quality.
The UX department while I was there was way more into testing users, and
working long hours trying to be as usable as possible than I would have ever
have expected.

~~~
theDoug
As a former user of Lulu, I'm very happy to hear about the improvements in
print quality and can now move Lulu from "Oh hell no, never again" status to
"viable alternative next time Blurb wants to charge me $80 for a 50 page
book."

~~~
chris11
What exactly were your problems with Lulu? I have been meaning to get a hard
copy of Creative Commons licensed math textbook made and was considering using
Lulu. Is it okay for printing technical books?

~~~
theDoug
The time I used it (which I think was right after they launched) the paper was
incredibly low quality and the print quality was lacking compared to what I'd
consider most laser printers capable of. This was for novel-type text. This
was also something like 7 or 8 years ago. I'm sure they've improved by now!

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mark_l_watson
I really like Lulu.com. I have published 2 books on Lulu (and 15 through
conventional publishers). Lulu is perfect for projects with limited market
potential that authors want to write anyway. I use Lulu for things I want to
give away free as PDFs and give people the option of getting a print book.

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pbhjpbhj
>"What it doesn't do is make it easy for you to understand which section of
the cover your actually editing"

Hope he proofread.

FWIW I make these mistakes (homophones) at a depressingly increasing rate; I
blame it on dying neurons.

~~~
dottertrotter
I proofread the book. I guess I should have proof read the blog post.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
What would I do then if there weren't silly little writing errors to nitpick
about...

