I’ve had a look at their Website and learned a fair bit about them, I knew they existed before today but didn’t fully understand or even wander into their Website to see what they do. Now I know what they do, I’m interested!
I’m interested in publishing my own Web Design related book (don’t ask about it right now, I know it sounds crazy xD) but of course with my lack of experience in the Web Design industry, me not being any type of figurehead or authority in the industry - I don’t think I’d get very far with a traditional publishing house! They’d laugh as much as you guys are probably laughing at reading this!
The Lulu.com print on demand service seems like a good service…Great in fact. I’ve read some of the forum threads and posts on their Website and there are good and bad comments.
Whether any of you have any experience with Lulu.com or not, or whether you’ve read something significant about the Lulu.com services or what not, I’d like to know as much as possible about them. I know this isn’t a book publishing forum but I figured some of you guys and girls would be able to help out a bit. I hope so anyway.
Besides, I’m hoping for some replies from SitePoint HQ Staff - According to this:
So there is certainly potential if the content is high quality and the market is there. Just because the information is available for free on the web does not mean that people will not be prepared to pay for it![/QUOTE]
It would seem like SitePoint started off with using Lulu.com and have experience with their services and look where SitePoint are now!
SitePoint has never used Lulu.com. Read mattymcg’s message again: “…a print-on-deman service just likelulu.com”.
The service we used was, at the time, called Digitz. I believe it has undergone a couple of name changes since then and is now called BookSurge. Digitz was instrumental in enabling us to get our business off the ground, but frankly the print-on-demand product suffered from terrible quality issues. Customers frequently complained of the binding breaking away from the cover, of pages falling out of their books. We even received some returns from customers whose books had been trimmed badly and arrived in oddly trapezoidal shapes!
Print on demand has probably come a long way since 2001, but back then we couldn’t get away from it quickly enough.
Also it’s worth pointing out that publishers don’t always look for the most highly experienced people in the industry. If you have something worth reading and you know what you are talking about, you don’t have to be some industry figurehead or idol in the web design community. Publishers want good writers with useful factual information which will sell and hopefully help the reader accomplish a variety of tasks. If you have good writing skills, enough experience and knowledge to back up your points and are willing to put in the hard work I don’t see why you couldn’t get published (trust me, as a recent author it’s about 10 times the work you think it is… it’s very exhausting at times but fulfilling). Why not write up a proposal about your book and pass it to a publisher or two, who knows where it may lead, to state a famous quote… “fortune favours the brave”, I’m sure Kevin will back me up on this.
I’m having a look at BookSurge / CreateSpace now though I feel more confident in this company, simply just because it is a subsidiary company of Amazon.
Heh, It sounds like it was driving the business into the ground rather than getting it off the ground. I certainly hope print-on-demand services like Lulu.com and BookSurge / CreateSpace have improved since 2001 - I’m sure they would have. It’s the only viable option right now really.
Thanks for your quick reply Kev! Anyone else have anything they can chip in with?
Heh, thanks for the encouraging words Alex! I’m confident in my skills and knowledge which is why I’ve already started writing the book, and I know how you feel already - It is very exhausting and very hard work to get perfect!
I’m glad you’ve posted in here Alex, I was going to PM you and ask about how everything went for you because I know you recently published your first book with Friends of Ed, which I’ll be buying by the way :p.
When you say a proposal, I know you don’t mean just a draft of the table of contents. What would a professional proposal include?
Andrew, generally a proposal is an overview about what kind of book you want to produce. Each publisher will have their own document for you to fill in but in the initial message to them you want to convey as much information as possible (without getting too wordy). I found that just trying to present the idea as well as possible was helpful in allowing them to understand what I wanted to accomplish (and therefore decide whether they want to take it further). I’m sure SitePoint are the same in that they would like some good solid specifics! Getting an actual contract to write (if they like your idea) is pretty time consuming, publishers have meetings and such to discuss potential new books and make decisions (but it’s worth hanging on). If there’s one piece of advice I could put across, it’s have a unique selling point for the book. Publishing is after all about making money, and if you have a gem of an idea which is totally unique, you stand a fair chance IMO.
I’m no supreme guru with all the answers, I also suffer dyslexia and spelling and grammar are a real problem for me (my copy editors could tell you stories of 3AM chats!), but I like to think I had something to offer and I’m really happy with my book, so if a dyslexic designer who’s only been in here a year can do it so can you.
PS: Feel free to PM me anyway if you want to know anything about my experiences, I don’t mind
I’m not sure if you need to spend a lot of time trying to find a publisher.
If you already have a good idea, by all means consider publishing it yourself.
I think there is a lot of interest in “how-to” books. If you can write something useful, like “Create an ecommerce site with Joomla” and then price it properly, you might have something. Be sure to have someone copy edit it and ask a friend to check all the examples to make sure they work before you put it on sale.
Kevin, just out of intrest, what’s the process for anyone who gets a book published by SitePoint and typically how long does it take (allowing however much time for the author to actually write the book)? Would the process generally be the same no matter what publisher and how does that compare with self-publishing?
I’ve known about Lulu for a while now. I think it’s probably good for those that don’t have connections and/or can’t afford to have it published the professional way.
Hey Andrew, I’ve used lulu before and have been very impressed with their quality and service. My first order took less than 48 hours from the time I ordered to the time they were on my doorstep and I’d say the quality was top notch. I’m about to try out create space too and see how that works, but from what I’ve heard I’m expecting good things.
I really can’t comment on how well they work from an end user perspective, but you can order a few samples for just a few bucks yourself and try them out to see what you think.
My intent was never to really profit from selling the book online though, but having a few copies on hand are better than any business card you can pass out and go a long way to establishing yourself as an expert in your field.
If I remember hearing right, Seth Godin never set out to become an author, but wrote mostly so that he could get speaking gigs. He started out with just ebooks but gave people a way to order hard copies if they wanted one, and many people ordered because they wanted to have a hard copy to read too.
My partner, whose background is as a professional typesetter, self-published his book at Lulu.com (he did the typesetting himself and supplied the PDF), and we both found the quality of cover and contents excellent, as good as “professionally” produced books. I’m surprised they can do it at the price, frankly; it’s very good value for short print-run books.
Publishing with Lulu also means you can easily get an ISBN (a bit of a hassle otherwise) and your book will go into major bibliographic databases and hence be available at international Amazon stores, and can be ordered by brick & mortar bookshops. This is important if you actually want to sell your book as opposed to handing it out to friends
Yea, I was just having a little browse and stumbled upon (because I certainly wouldn’t think about publishing a book with them! Wow! Imagine that!) O’Reilly’s documents / pages:
See, I really liked your encouragement and positivity, but then I thought - How the hell does a guy like me justify writing / publishing a book with an established and renowned publishing company? Most authors have over 10 years experience and have been designing / developing since the mid nineties and have huge clients to their portfolio list!
I’m still a UK college student! Come to think of it, it’s a pretty crazy idea now that I think of it! But it doesn’t sound so crazy if I go it alone (as in self-publishing) but with the help of a few people.
Heh, I didn’t know that. It doesn’t show anyway. You should be really proud of your book, I’m sure everyone who has read it has loved it and I’m sure everyone who will read it will love it, I know I will.
The way you typed that last part makes it sound like you’re saying you’ve been in the industry (or unless you mean in SitePoint Forums) for a year and that has been what has enabled you to get this far in the industry and write a book. But you have previous, years of experience under your belt too! I should think stuff through next time lol.
Thanks. I’ll be sure to
Thanks for the encouraging words wildscribe. I think I’m leaning more towards self-publishing as it seems a more viable option. I won’t go into details in this thread, but it definately isn’t a “how-to” type of book or like most other books featured on the Lulu.com site. Although I’d use a service like Lulu.com or CreateSpace, the book I’m writing is looking to be more on the 500-600 page mark. Most of the books I’ve seen on the site are no more than 200 pages.
I’d like it if my IT tutors could be the “technical reviewers” of the book and I’ll ask my former English tutor if she has any time to proofread it for me. And of course I’ll ask for some people to test the examples out and hand out draft / review copies to a select few people before I publish it.
Thanks for the input Very helpful.
I second this :tup:
Indeed. It’s why I was considering Lulu and the self-publishing route as opposed to having it published by a professional publishing company. If it turns out to be a hit, I could end up having an offer from a professional publishing company to have it re-issued / published with them, which would be fantastic!
Thanks! That sounds great then! It would seem they have come a long way since 2001! Let me know how your experience goes with CreateSpace will you? They both look like good self-publishing services. Each with their own pros and cons that are equally tempting!
Great idea :tup: I’ll do exactly that.
Another who has experience with Lulu.com and has had a positive experience then! Everything it sounding a bit more encouraging and positive now! I was in doubts when I read Kevins comment about how things were going for them back when they started out.
Indeed, getting an ISBN for your book with little hassle is also a major advantage in these type of services. You can also do this with CreateSpace too, I believe. Having my book available on Amazon.com / .co.uk would probably be the hallmark of having it published I think.
Thanks for the feedback and comments guys and girls. Really helpful stuff. I have at least two self-publishing service companies that I can go to when my books ready.
AndrewCooper, You could always as you said publish along with other authors (get some other people involved) and that’s certainly one way of getting yourself published in web design. They are lengthy documents but their usually not hard to follow, proposals only need to be a page or two (post formatting) just to outline your intentions. I don’t have huge clients, and most of my web design work was carried out either part time or as a hobbyist (I only made web design my full time career last Feb - used to freelance software development). It’s not about the name, it’s about the quality of the information and the knowledge you can put across. If you wanted to send me a PM about what your intending I don’t mind perhaps giving you some outside opinion to point you in the right direction.
It’s certainly an option but publishers have a lot of contacts, especially in retailers (non-online), so you can get your title to a wider audience. Online publishing isn’t a replacement for the traditional book selling method, at least not yet (same goes for the iPad in terms of it not going to replace traditional book mediums).
I don’t know if it helps but when I wrote my book it took about 3 months getting the idea refined and approved before I got a signed deal to write the title, then a solid 6 months of writing full time to get the whole thing complete (including redrafts, technical edits, copy edits, etc)… it’s a long term commitment and certainly not to be undertaken lightly. I had a few stress moments which made me wonder how I managed to get through the whole thing but I did.
You don’t need “connections” to get published, if the idea is good enough, send it in and they’ll consider it (O’Riley, APress, SitePoint, PeachPit, Etc).
My husband and I self-published our own book, going through a regular printer. We learned a lot, but it is an enormous amount of work. Granted, we didn’t have the opportunities for Internet marketing and social media marketing at that time.
Our next book will be done soon. It’s titled, “How to Invest Thousands in the Publishing Industry and Make Hundreds in Return.” ; )
Hmm indeed. I’d like to get a few trusted people involved really. A few of my teachers reviewing it and giving me some feedback, some friends giving feedback on how the difficulty of the reading is and maybe one or two specialists from the SitePoint Forums would be happy to make some small contributions to it.
Hmm, and you think that a professional publishing company would be interested in having an 18 / 19 yr old author on their list? I’m far from a professional, I’m just a beginner myself but I do feel (from the books I’ve previously read about Web Design and the like) that I am able to write a book that is much better than most others and can offer much more for the reader. I would have thought that professional publishing companies would want authors who are professionals in their respective industry - Not a beginner. Hence why it is hard for me to justify why someone should publish my book.
Thanks Alex, I will do. It would be very much appreciated.
A solid 6 months of full time writing? Full time as in full time working hours? Like…How many hours a day were you spending on it? Is 6 months or so an average length of time for that size of book to be written in?
Perhaps if you don’t have the experience, you could build yourself up to a book by writing articles for websites and blogs… you get paid for the work (if it’s accepted), it gives you exposure (professionally) and it gives you an idea of what book writing is like (at a basic level).
The 6 months was full time writing, I ended up (some days) spending anywhere between 6-10 hours a day. I am not the fastest typist and my book is pretty page heavy, but still… it’s not some part time flurry, it requires a lot of hard work, and that includes post release where you market the book to let people know it’s out
I would be interested to find out the experiences of some of SitePoint’s authors as to what they thought of the process and what they would do different if they were to get another book published.
It’s okay to use self-publishing packages, if you know the pitfalls and carefully assess what others’ experiences have been with them. In my PBS column on self-publishing, I urge people to do the research ahead of time before committing to a contract with one of these companies. Read these articles to find the stories of people who have had to do it all over again after unsatisfactory experiences. Please, do not be wooed by “Cheap! Easy! Fast!”
Best of luck in your publishing projects!
Carla
:p.