Publishing On Demand - FREE

If you´re doing well with an ebook, or have trouble finding a publisher, you might wonder about self publishing your book in a publishing on demand manner. Here are some of your options involving publishing on demand, or POD, that are FREE. There is NO up front cost at all. You do all the work, you load in your book and your cover images, and then people pay a per-book price when they order copies. You get a share of each sale price.

Note that this can be EXPENSIVE. Publishers who ask for a fee up front usually give you a break on the per-book cost, offer marketing services, and much more. Publishers who let you do this all for free often charge really high costs per book, to be able to pay to run their business. So consider your options carefully before you skip over the fee publishers and go with a free one. You might do better in the long run, by putting in money up front.

With publishing on demand, the printer only prints out a book when it´s needed - either because a customer asks for one or because you, the author, ask for some to bring to a bookstore. This means the initial cost is low - but it also means you do most of the work.

Lulu.com
Lulu has a free option in their system. You load in a Word DOC file, load in JPGs for the cover images, and voila, you are all set. I have a 352 page romance novel in Lulu - Badge of Honor - a medieval romance - and the base price for them to sell it is $11.57. That means I get no profit at all, that is what they charge to print it, and it doesn't even include shipping. If I wanted to make a profit, I would have to increase the price over the $11.57. So then the question is who would pay say $14 for a 352 page romance novel. This is great fun, and good quality, but the price per book ends up being high.

Lulu Step by Step Description

CafePress.com
CafePress is famous for letting you sell tshirts, bags, and all sorts of items with your own designs. They now let you load in books, too. You load in the PDF file for the content, JPGs for the covers, and you're done. I have a 470 page romance novel at CafePress - Beliving Your Eyes - a medieval romance - and the base price for them to sell it is a whopping $21.10. This is just a small paperback, it's not hardcover or anything. That doesn't include shipping or any profit by me. If I wanted to make a profit, I'd have to increase the price even higher than that. If you wonder who would pay $14 for a paperback romance, who would pay over $20 for one??

CafePress Step by Step Description

CreateSpace.com
CreateSpace is a part of Amazon, which is always a good thing when it comes to books. They offer a free ISBN number with your entry, which saves you a lot of money! On one hand an ISBN is usually only $25, but on the other you usually have to buy a set of 10 ISBNs at once - you can't buy just one. So unless you plan on printing 10 different books in the near future, that's a lot of wasted up front money.

CreateSpace Step by Step Description

NovelMaker.com
Two people suggested I check out NovelMaker. They let you load your book online so that others can critique it - but they don't seem to have their actual "print" side set up yet. They have material on their site that says you can read the rates and information online, but when you do more research, they actually want you to email them to get all of that information. So it seems something that they're interested in doing eventually, just not yet.

Note that in order to be sold at many stores (including Amazon) you need both an ISBN number and to be listed in the Ingram Book Company listing. So be sure to factor those prices into your costs, if the publisher you choose does not do those things for you.

Publishing On Demand - FREE comparison chart
Publishing On Demand - Fee Based Options

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