Promoting your Lulu Book

Once your Lulu book is fully set in the Lulu system, and you've ordered and reviewed a copy of it to make sure it really is the way you want it to be, it's time to promote it. As much as you might wish, you can't just put a book into Lulu and hope that millions of people somehow find it and buy it. You have to actually promote it.

I have lots of pages in this area on what to do, but to summarize, you need to:

Get an ISBN Number
This is key. You really should have done this when you were putting your book into Lulu, but if you didn't do it yet, do it now. You can't sell your book anywhere "real" like Amazon, bookstores etc. without an ISBN number. Follow the link, get yourself a number, and assign it to your book.

Selling with Amazon Advantage
Once you have an ISBN number and 2 or 3 physical copies of the book in your hand, sign up for Amazon Advantage. It's very cheap and now you can have your book listed in Amazon's gigantic library. This can be a critical way for people to find you and to enjoy your works.

Also, don't forget to customize your Lulu "thank you note" so that anybody who does buy one of your books gets a personalized note from you. This can help you build up a conversation with your loyal visitors.

I've done these three steps. If you really want to promote your book, the next step once this is ready is to start mailing copies of your book out to reviewers, and to get your family and friends to read and review your book on their websites, blogs and in Amazon. The more reviews you can get out there about your book, the better your chances are that people will buy it!

Note: Lulu provides print-on-demand partnerships with Amazon and others, so that your book can be listed and instantly printed when people order it there. However, they won't do that for normal "small size" paperbacks!! The only books eligible for this format are: 6"x9", 8.5"x11", Royal(6.14"x9.21"), Crown Quarto(7.44"x9.68"), A4(8.27"x11.69")

From our Chocolate editor -

Congratulations on your Lulu book, by the way. My husband published a book through them, and it sounds like you two had some of the same experiences in terms of struggling to get your book to look like your book! I think his lulus with Lulu beat yours, though - the first time he ordered a copy of his own book, it was his cover with somebody else’s text inside! And some people had already ordered the book! What a pain...

I don’t know if this is something that would apply to how you’re marketing and selling your book, but my husband once went to a bookstore to talk to them about carrying his, and the employee looked it up on and said that the distributor listed it as costing $40. It’s a trade paperback! Dh had to go back to Lulu and get them to list the price correctly.

Badge of Honor Take a look at the Badge of Honor sales page in Lulu, to get a sense of what the final product looks like. Badge of Honor at Lulu.com

Publishing On Demand Step By Step - Lulu
Lulu Self Publishing - Setting Up the Book
Formatting your Book for Self Publishing
Creating a Lulu Covers

Quality of Lulu Books
Print Copy Sample from Lulu #1
Print Copy Sample from Lulu #2
Print Copy Sample from Lulu #3

Promoting your Lulu Book
Problems and Issues with Lulu

Lulu Self Publishing Main Page
Getting Your Book Published
Writing Tips and Online Books

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