Now I Am A Published Author

  
3rd April 2008
Karen Inskip-Hayward

I have written things for as long as I can remember - stories, articles, poetry, half-novels, etc. but have found the whole area of publishing at best daunting and at worst soul-destroying. I have had some things published - poems, articles, that kind of thing - but the whole process is quite negative. You get rejected repeatedly; it's not great for a writer's fragile ego. If you do get accepted, you also sign over your work to someone who might wish to change it.

So, how does it sound, if you had complete editorial control over your work? If you could publish it, edited as you wish, with your own cover design and everything you would like? It sounds great, doesn't it?

This is why I joined Lulu - a website where you can self-publish your work, just as you would like it to be. You can also buy other people's work too, of course, but the site does so much, it's best to look for yourself. I shall concentrate on detailing my own experiences about publishing through Lulu.

The first thing I published was a book of my poems. I have had several published in magazines over the past few years and wrote to a publishing house, who basically told me to go away, get more poems published in more magazines, then come back in a year. I didn't want to wait. I had a good amount of poems I felt were of a high enough standard to publish, so I did some research and discovered Lulu. I joined and began the rather complicated process of preparing my poetry collection for publication.

To do this, you basically go through an online wizard, which explains the steps you need to create your book, pamphlet, calendar or whatever. Before you start this process, you need to have the work you want saved in a file on your computer and you should have proof-read it for obvious errors (or ask a friend to do this).

You upload your document and Lulu converts it to a PDF file. You can then check this looks okay, then if it does, move on to the next stages. You choose the type of binding you want, the size of book, upload a cover (or choose from the templates on the website), approve everything and then choose the amount of royalties you wish to receive per copy sold. All these are up to you, although some will be restricted by the amount of pages.

To give you an example of this, I will explain about the things I have published through Lulu. My poetry collection 'Petals of Pleasure… Petals of Pain' consists of forty poems, which became a thin book with photographic covers, which feature two of my photos. Having total control over the content meant I could also write my own list of acknowledgements and dedications - so in this, you will find I mention not only my family, but also people like Colin Baker, Nadia Comaneci and Helena Bonham-Carter! This book sold pretty well.

Next, I uploaded twelve of my photos for a 2007 calendar. I chose the best quality in everything and - even with only a small commission - it came out as costing around £20 a calendar! I didn't even sell one! It was ridiculously overpriced, so I deleted that one.

After that, I published a project, which was simply for me. You see, you don't have to put everything up for sale; you can just print out one copy for yourself, if you wish. That is what I did here. I published a kind of diary I had written, through my emails to friends and family. This was a much bigger document and the book was large enough to have a good sized spine, which looked rather professional. I was the only one to buy this, so I bought it for cost. This was £4.19 - the amount Lulu says it costs to print out a copy. The document is stored on the website and if I wanted to, I could buy more at the same price.

This year, I have published two things. The first is a photo book - quite a new idea for the website. I take a lot of photos and many people have complimented me on them and suggested they were good enough to sell, so I printed out a photo book featuring views of the country. I entitled it 'England - My Photographic Views' and this is a large sized book (8.5" x 11") which sells for £8.05 in print or £5 in download, netting me £3 and £4 respectively in royalties.

Finally, I published a gymnastics book which is a mixture of the history of the sport in the 1980s and my memories of it. It's definitely a niche market, but I managed to get an interview with four-time Olympic Champion Ecaterina Szabo of Romania and I got exclusive photos of her and another famous gymnast for the covers. This book is a similar size to my diary book. It sells for £9.74 in print, which nets me £4 per book.

Royalties are paid out once a month and mine go straight into my Paypal account. I have only sold twenty-two copies in total, so you are unlikely to make your fortune here, but it can be a nice bit of pocket money. The (small) income is just a little bonus to me though. The main advantage of the website is being able to see my work in print, to have complete editorial control over it, to design my own covers and to see people buying the end product.

There aren't many disadvantages really, just a few -

• It is an American site, so we Brits have to pay a bit more for postage and wait a bit longer for the items to arrive.
• The uploading process can be rather tedious though. It took me two hours to get my covers right for the gymnastics book, as the specifications I had used were different to those the site wanted.
• They also suggest you order a copy of your work to check, before you put it up for general sale - but I hate waiting!
• You have to pay extra for an ISBN number (and last time I looked, this cost about £80, so I didn't bother!). Without one, your book can't be held in libraries or listed on Amazon.
• You have to pay for every copy you want - but only cost price and you could always buy some, and then sell them directly at a profit.

Overall, I love this site and intend to continue using it. It allows you to put your work out into the wide world and might even get you noticed by 'established' publishers, if you're lucky. Personally, I'm not holding my breath! I'm happy with this and in the next year or so, I hope to publish my autobiography, but will only make it available to family and close friends. It will also be great to leave this to my children and future grandchildren.