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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 10/17
/2007 – Using the web to
market your book – For the
past 2 weeks I’ve been talking to Matt McFarland ,
a local Spokane Author who’s written a book about his
Catholic school experience, “The
Boy with Backward Eyes”,.
his experience of being a dyslexic student in
Catholic school; wonderfully funny and also heart warming. Matt had
chosen to market and publish his book on the internet, going through one of
the new publishing websites – www.lulu.com
– that somewhat levels the playing field for first time authors. Years
ago, if someone wanted to publish their own book, and if they had been
rejected by the national publishing houses, or if their book had limited
subject appeal, they would usually go to what was considered a Vanity Press;
a book publishing company that would publish small quantities of any book
that someone wanted to have published. But with
the WWW today, it’s actually possible for anyone who has written a book
to bootstrap themselves up hopefully into national prominence by going
through one of the new publishing websites. And readers can buy your book in paper
format, or download and read it as a .pdf file. www.lulu.com advertises that they will help
you publish your own paper book, E-book, cd’s,
dvd’s, or other digital media. Their
website says that if you want to self publish a paperback book : “You can buy one
paperback for yourself, or you can sell your book to the whole wide world.
You’ll be amazed how inexpensive it is to self-publish a paperback book
– and how quickly your % of all creator revenue can add up.” Set
your own price Lulu makes it easy to see exactly how much
it costs to produce your
book with their online calculator. I found you could print 100 100 page standard sized
paperbacks for $ 493.00. Get
your own International Standard Book Number - and get distributed in more than
60,000 retail locations, online and off 6. Payment Terms
In order to purchase
Content on site, User must possess either a valid credit card or a PayPal
account. In this publishing
process, you enter into an agreement with Lulu where they will publish your
book or cd, and you enter into a revenue sharing agreement with them, sharing
the actual profit - after they cover their production and freight charges for
printing the book and shipping it to the customer. You can set the amount of revenue you
will receive for each piece of Content sold. In general, Lulu's service fee
is 20% of the gross margin resulting from the sale of Content.. For example, if you publish
a book that costs $5.00 to manufacture
and you want $4.00 in Revenue, Lulu will set the price of your book at $ 10,
with them getting 20% of the revenue. One thing I found out
from this experience is that I like real paper books; I like to look at them,
and hold them, put a book marker in them, and then keep them on my bookshelf
as favorites. I had read Matt’s book in
paperback originally, and then I bought and downloaded it in electronic .pdf
form. I’ll take the paper book
any day, but maybe the new generation of book readers
prefer these e-books. So if you’re an
aspiring author – you now have a lot more options. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2007 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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