(Lulu.com)

Could traditional book publishers be heading the way of traditional music companies, which are heading the way of dinosaurs, thanks to the internet? They could, but for different reasons.

For one, people are not endangering the traditional publishing industry by downloading books for free over the internet, the way music downloading continues to mushroom. However, many authors are eschewing traditional publishers and book retailers in favour of online print-on-demand (POD) companies.

I am one of the many.

When I first approached a traditional Canadian publisher with my how-to book about freelance writing, I received tentative interest. The publisher wanted to know if I could guarantee 2,000 sales. If so, the publisher was willing to print 4,000 copies and put the other 2,000 into circulation. This was not a vanity publisher, it was a legitimate publisher of popular fiction and non-fiction titles.

Lulu.com boasts a network of 500,000 visitors. (Lulu.com)

I could not guarantee the sales and was not willing to buy that many books to flog at my seminars. So I approached another publisher. By the time the second publisher replied, I had discovered Lulu.com, an online POD company.

Just as the rock group Radiohead is selling its latest CD from its website — cutting out music companies, distributors and retailers — literally tens of thousands of self-published authors have cut out the middlemen and now sell self-published books online. Lulu.com says it has 1.2 million registered users and receives about 4,000 pieces of new content each month. The site says it logs monthly traffic of more than three million unique visitors.

How POD works

Lulu allows authors to upload books to its website, gives them a storefront address to sell from (such as www.lulu.com/johnsmith), and processes credit card orders. Lulu ships books or makes Adobe PDF files available for downloading — depending on what the buyer wants. The PDFs arrive instantly, without shipping charges. Hard-copy books are printed on demand and shipped to the buyer.

Lulu sets the printing fee based on the number of pages. The author sets the retail price. Lulu takes a small percentage of the difference between the printing fee and the retail price, and the author keeps the rest — the royalty. If I sell no books, I earn no revenue, nor does Lulu. But I also never pay Lulu a cent — unless I buy copies of my books, at wholesale or the printing price.

Most other online POD or self-publishing companies, such as Trafford Publishing, AuthorHouse and iUniverse, charge an up-front fee for setting up the book for publishing. This fee generally runs from $1,000 to $2,500. However, other POD companies also give authors advice on how to format books. Some even help create book covers or offer editorial thoughts.

Trafford, AuthorHouse and iUniverse also place books by self-published authors with Amazon.com and with other online retailers. This is a service Lulu now offers, for a fee. However, I have opted not to pay for it. If I don’t need publishers taking a cut of my sales, I don’t need booksellers eating my margins either.

And it's not just authors and publishers who see a future in the on-demand universe.

Recognizing that there is a buck to be made in the self-publishing business, Amazon.com, the world’s largest online book retailer, acquired POD publishing company CreateSpace in 2005. I guess Amazon decided that, if it could make money from readers, it could make money from writers, too. As with Lulu, CreateSpace does not charge authors an up-front fee to get their books online. In addition, both Lulu and CreateSpace provide inventory-free, physical distribution of CDs and DVDs, as well as video downloads.

Ups and downs of do-it-yourself publishing

Based on the lukewarm welcome from the Canadian publishing industry, I decided to try the POD route. By the time the second publisher got back to me, I was selling two books on Lulu. The publisher said he’d pay me a 10 per cent royalty and would print 2,000 copies. But he’d "like it" if I could buy 200 books. And I'd have to remove my books from Lulu.

I did the math. To earn the amount the publisher was offering me, all I had to do was sell 200 books on Lulu.

The question on the mind of most self-published authors is this: Can I sell my books? Fortunately, I already had the answer. I had, in under a year, sold well over 200 copies of each book. Sales were trending up (most hard-copy book sales trend down shortly after the initial launch euphoria) and I had three more books in the works.

I declined the publisher’s offer. Instead, I continued to write, create, upload and promote my books from my website and on various book-oriented e-mail lists. I am not a famous author, but I am making money and I like the feeling of independence that I have.

Without the backing of a so-called "legitimate" publisher, I now sell one of my books on copywriting to two university continuing education departments. My how-to book on writing media releases has been picked up by a do-it-your-self public relations website. And a book on optimizing websites to boost search engine results is selling briskly to small businesses.

With Lulu's business model, I am, in short, running a virtual mail-order book business — but I don't process payments or ship books. And I don't have a basement full of inventory.

Although it costs me nothing to sell books through Lulu, I had to format my books and design my covers. I have some facility with Word and with a graphics program, so I was able to produce clean layouts and create functional covers. However, creating layouts and book covers could be onerous for some authors, so they might be better off with another POD company or at least find a third party to prepare their books.

Winners and losers

Now, let's be honest. Most writers who self-publish will not be successful, certainly not in Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code terms, or even in terms of Canadian bestsellers (about 5,000 books).

However, most self-published fiction authors and poets publish for family and friends. They have no need for publishers or retailers; POD serves them well. Many non-fiction authors sell books from websites or after workshops. The chances of someone wandering into a Chapters looking for one of our books is slim. We have discovered that POD can be a very profitable niche.

With a little help from the web and online POD companies, the public is served; the publishers and retailers are left out of the equation.

(Paul Lima is a freelance writer, communications instructor and self-published author. Visit him online at www.paullima.com.)