More Book Stuff + Lulu Advice

Exciting news! I have now sold a grand total of 2 copies of my book to people who are not me.  I’m not sure what the rules are, but I’m pretty sure that I’m now allowed to use the phrase “best-selling author” on my CV.  Genuine thanks go out to Joanne and Joe (aka JLS from Team Extreme) for actually bothering.  I’m sure that you’ll both get your just rewards for being such fine, upstanding members of society.  I do expect them both to write glowing reviews of the book that I can publish on here as testimonials.  I also expect a similar review from Dr Angel who has her own copy of the wonderful work of literature.  She earned her complimentary copy of the book by being the only person who’s ever shown any sustained interest in The World of Sherby57.  I couldn’t have done it without her.

Anyway, enough with the sentimentality, let’s carry on with some more tedious book related news.  It probably isn’t a good marketing technique to mention this, but I did learn something valuable about self-publishing with Lulu.com:  make double sure that you’ve picked the most appropriate paper size for your book.

There are several options of book size on Lulu and I settled on “pocket” for no particular reason.  Many of the sizes were so similar that I pretty much picked at random.  However I had a few formatting problems when trying to upload my ‘manuscript’ to the web-site and so, out of frustration, I decided to re-format from a different template.  I picked A5, simply because it was the one I had heard of.  Luckily, this time I was able to upload and publish successfully.

However, at a later date, I was browsing on Lulu and spotted a book with a similar number of pages to mine that was significantly cheaper.  I investigated to see how they had achieved it and it was simply down to the paper size.  I don’t really understand why such similar sized books should vary so much in price.  For example, the manufacturing cost of a 100-page A5 book is £7.35; the price for a similar 100-page Pocket book is £2.98.  The size of A5 is 5.8″ x 8.2″.  The size of Pocket is 4.2″ x 6.8″.  It doesn’t make any sense to me either.  Just make sure you choose wisely.

Anyway, I can only apologise for my crapness.  If I’ve not completely put you off, you can buy a copy of my book from here.  There’s a very nifty preview of the first 12 pages, so go and have a nosy.