The SPBE is an exhibition that focuses exclusively on self-published books and authors, and we are proud to be platinum sponsors for the inaugural event. We’ll have a booth at the show, and throughout the day we’ll be hosting sessions about Lulu, our services and our social media offerings. We’ll be giving away a $369 Primer Pack services package to one lucky person who attends our sessions and, at day’s end, we’ll have a drawing for a pair of Bose headphones.

At 1:30 PM Bob will be giving a talk titled Self is to Publishing What Jon is to Kate (Plus 8), where he’ll give a new vision for the publishing industry and explain where Lulu is headed. If you know anything about Bob, you know it won’t be boring!

At 3 PM Harish and I will be presenting a session titled, How Social Media Will Transform Publishing. The presentation will look at where social media is now, how it’s changing the publishing industry and where it’s going.

There are also a number of excellent panels on Online Marketing, Understanding Distribution, and a talk on the rise of ebooks by founder of Smashwords, Mark Coker, to name a few.

 

You’ll now find their works — and about 200,000 other eBook titles from traditionally published authors — in the Lulu Marketplace. We’ve added them through agreements with Ingram and other distributors to make their public catalogs available on our site.

It’s a significant shift for Lulu, but one rooted in a strategy to maximize author success that has guided us from the beginning. To sell more books, you need more exposure. We’ve long provided distribution choices to help you reach customers in myriad stores, including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. We’re continuing to expand those options, and we’ll have more to share soon.

But that’s not enough. The time has come for a better marketplace. Like many of you, we’re discouraged by some trends in the industry and what they might mean for the future of books. Here at Lulu we champion books, and the people who create them, because of what they represent. Books are conversations between generations that convey our best thinking and help move us forward. They deserve appreciation. And authors deserve success.

The open marketplace we’re building will have the broadest selection. It will be a one-stop shop with content from all authors, in all styles and in all formats, paper and electronic. The goal is to give readers access to the best knowledge, ideas and entertainment and to give authors access to the best audience for their works. We believe the increased choice offered by increased selection will attract more readers. And as we attract more readers, we will have more opportunity to get Lulu authors in front of people most likely to buy. In fact, we’ve invested in recommendation technology to help with that by steering readers based on their browsing patterns.

Adding 200,000 eBooks is just the first step in a journey that will unfold over the coming months, one intended to bring more success to Lulu authors every day. As always, I welcome your suggestions and feedback as we move forward.

 

Why publish an eBook? The simple answer is it makes sense for both authors (universal distribution, more sales, and higher royalties) and readers (cheaper than print, instant delivery, and mobile access). How can Lulu help? By providing features to support a wide range of scenarios: give eBooks away for free as a marketing tool, automatically link eBook and print editions to enhance discovery and provide more options to readers, and offer optional copy-protection (DRM) to prevent piracy and unlicensed distribution.

Beginning today, Lulu supports all of these options, and more. With multi-device support, readers can access your eBook on a Mac, PC, iPhone (Stanza), Sony Reader, and many others. You can now upload files in the popular EPUB format, which is quickly becoming the industry standard (see recent announcements by Barnes & Noble and Sony). Concerned about losing sales when you make unprotected digital content available in the marketplace? You can now apply DRM to your eBook, and sell a licensed version which can’t be freely copied and distributed.

To support enabling these features for more than a million Lulu authors, Lulu has adopted a new pricing structure for eBooks and print downloads.  As always, it’s still free to publish, and if you choose, you can continue to give away your digital content for free. For authors who want to sell eBooks and downloads, we’ve added a fixed $1.49 base price to cover our credit card processing and hosting expenses. Applying DRM (optional, eBooks only) adds $.99 to the base price to offset the fee charged by our DRM provider.  To reiterate, authors never pay to publish, these fees are reflected in the list price and are only charged to the purchaser at purchase time.

All of us at Lulu are excited about our new eBooks, and welcome your feedback. Stay tuned–we’re actively exploring many more features, including providing easy access to retail distribution channels with the goal of enabling Lulu authors to sell eBooks in every online marketplace.  Meanwhile, we encourage you to get started and publish an eBook today.

 

Send an email to: DesignChat@lulu.com and the first 10 people will be sent the URL and password to participate in the chat. Looking forward to helping you making beautiful books!

 

Obviously, one of the most important aspects of our site is our publishing process. Our wizard helps authors create a book from their digital files, and we want the system to be as easy to navigate as possible. With that in mind, we want your feedback on what we can do to improve the publishing process.

Can we improve the process for adding ISBNs to your book? Is the language used to explain the steps straight-forward enough? Let us know what you think!

 

20% off anything on the site
Valid: 10/30/09 - 11/2/09
Coupon code:  FALLBACK

Promotional codes cannot be applied to any previous order. No exchanges or substitutions allowed. Only one valid coupon code may be used per account. Offer expires on 11/02/09 at 11:59 PM GMT. Orders must be in U.S. Dollars. Lulu.com reserves the right to change or revoke this offer at any time. Void where prohibited.

 

On November 5th at 3:30pm EST we will be hosting Lulu Publishing Services 101 to discover how a little professional help on your book goes a long way. We will be discussing the reasons why or why not you might benefit from services such as editing, formatting and cover design.

Join us for a half hour right here and we’ll cover the most common pre-publishing topics. Mark your calendar—seating is limited and we’ll be accepting attendees 30 minutes before the call. No need to register in advance. If you cannot make it at this time we will post the seminar for replay in the near future.

Get a jump on publishing using this coupon and save 20% off when you purchase at least $350 worth of services.

Promotional codes cannot be applied to any previous order. No exchanges or substitutions allowed. Only one valid coupon code may be used per account. Offer expires on 10/31/09 at 11:59 PM EST. Orders must be in U.S. Dollars. Lulu.com reserves the right to change or revoke this offer at any time. Void where prohibited.

 

As many of you are aware, we’ve temporarily removed the hit counter from our product pages. We recently discovered it had introduced a security vulnerability on our site, and are working hard to fix and bring back this popular tool. We would also like to offer other innovative and effective ways to help you analyze the effectiveness of your marketing, generate more traffic, and sell more books. As such, we want to hear from you. What statistics about your book or account would be helpful for you? What tools would best help you improve marketing impact?

Let us know what you’d be interested in seeing, and we’ll see what we can do!

 

Weekend sales are also running this weekend in the UK and France. Check out the French and UK homepages for more information!