Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Get Your Creativity Published Stress-Free

A friend of mine, a talented writer and poet named Dabetswe Natasha, recently self-published a collection of poems titled, "Affinity of Our Chemistry" through www.lulu.com. She's a very bright poet who transforms words into emotions effortlessly. Please check out her work at www.lulu.com/dabetswe. I learned about Lulu, a web-based self-publishing service, through her. To anyone, who might want to get their creativity published and sold, this might be of interest.
Here what I found out from their website;

You write the book. Lulu basically prints and ships each book/order as it is bought. They charge no set-up fees or have minimum orders. The buyer would pay for the cost, not you as the writer. You get to have 80% of the profits ... basically, you get a commission. You get to have all rights to your work. You control the design and layout of the book, as well as the price and royalties. You can sell through their Lulu website as well as through Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Noble. The heady parts, such as transactions, order tracking, and shipping, is handled through them as well.

However, the marketing/promotion of your own book, a very vital aspect of the cash flow potential, is your own responsibility. The key thing is to get the word out there about your work. The books that I've browsed through so far range around $9.99 in cost (around $4.99 if you wish to have it in e-format/download).

There's a preview feature that lets you preview a portion of a specific book, in order to prevent buying something truly aweful and to help get the feel of a specific work. It might not bring in a ton of extra income since you only get a commission but it'll still be something if you already have poems or a mini-novel or a short story lying around somewhere collecting dust and cat fur. Since there's no cost to you, it seems like a worry-free way to get yourself published.

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