My brother wanted to be a writer when he finished university, and for 6 months, he sat and wrote a full novel, but never did get round to publishing it. The ones he took it to didn’t like it all that much, because, if I remember correctly, it was not African enough (a very annoying thing about living in SA, is that it is the politically correct thing to make everything ‘African’).
Well, the problem of getting published for a writer is no longer that much of an issue. that is all thanks to a really innovative site called lulu.com.
What they are, are an online publishing company that lets you publish your own book, and gives you the freedom to control every aspect of the book, from the design, paper format and price, to how you would like to sell it.
The reason why Lulu works so well, is that books are only printed on demand. That means there are never any large runs with 1000 copies of your brand new book gathering dust in your cupboard under the stairs.
So, how do you sell your book then? Well, Lulu interfaces direct to Amazon, so if a copy of the book gets sold on Amazon, it is printed off and posted along to the buyer directly. And if you would to sell your book in a more conventional way at bookstores, then you are free to order a batch, and then distribute it. Lulu also makes it very easy to distribute your book as an ebook as well.
There is a downside too though. With a traditional publisher, you would get a marketing campaign and solid distribution network behind you. Thus, it is quite likely that an established writer would not benefit too much from taking advantage of Lulu. For a new writer who is struggling to get published, or someone who is not seriously into writing, but has a book they would like to publish, the business model of Lulu is a much better fit.
