Several people have mentioned Lulu.com to me as a publishing option, so I’ve been checking into it in more detail today. This FAQ page was especially helpful to me in understanding how the process works. In a nutshell, Lulu makes it “free” to publish your book through them and then they assume all the costs of printing, binding and shipping it. In some ways, they are kind of like a print broker in that they partner with several Print-On-Demand (POD) vendors, so you are paying them to handle all the printing details for you. For an additional $99.95 you can purchase either their Published By You or Published By Lulu packages. Then they also take care of purchasing an ISBN and EAN Barcode and making your book available through their distribution channels, which feed into several major on-line booksellers.

Lulu gives a book pricing example that helped me better understand the setup. Basically, out of the cover price that you set for the book, Lulu subtracts the production costs ($.02/page for printing and a fixed cost of $4.53 for the cover (paperback), binding and setup) and a 20% commission off of the remaining profit margin.

In my opinion, one of the big downsides to this is the high cost the author has to pay for their own copies of the book. According to the Lulu Cost Calculator, if I wanted to purchase 25 copies of my book (at 250 pages per book), it would cost me $238.25 (or $9.53 per book). I think this is typical in the publishing world, but if I’m self-publishing, it would be nice to produce and purchase my own books for less. It could be that the trade-off in the other services they provide (distribution, shipping, marketing, etc.) are worth it, though. I guess I’ll find out as I continue my research.