New Revolutionary Models of Book Publishing and Death of the Subsidy Publishing



The electronic version of the book can be downloaded instantly and the printed one delivered to the buyer in a few days. The cost of the process to the author is surprisingly, absolutely and precisely zero and the quality of publishing including cover graphics etc, fabulous. Incase the author wishes to get the book an ISBN and get it listed there is a small charge (Thirty four dollars) that is not significant. If this sounds unbelievable, just visit the website www.lulu.com. In order to verify and test out this process, this author submitted a revised version of one of his already published works of fiction - Mystic and the Blossoms - to the process and found all this to be absolutely true. There were no hidden charges or pitfalls at all and a brand new version of this book spiced up with fancy illustrations and a superb full color cover is now available to my fans on a worldwide basis. I intend now to publish some of my professional books with them soon. A link is posted with this article for the reader to verify.

The traditional book publishing process can be extremely tedious for an author. The book is submitted to a literary agent who then seeks a publisher. The entire process, if it goes through at all, can take months. New authors face the problem of locating a literary agent first and that is not easy since literary agents are inundated by proposals and therefore selective. The traditional book publishing process is expensive and calls for large investments on behalf of the publisher. Therefore, understandably they are selective.

In the new model as practiced by Lulu enterprises the process of conversion from manuscript to print ready formatting is automated through software designed for the process. The book remains on the servers until ordered. It is printed only when an order is placed by the POD or print on demand process. Since the cost of electronic processing is low, electronic processors can afford to waive charges from the author. They make their profits from the copies that do sell.

An alternative route that some authors followed in the past was subsidy and vanity publishing i.e. a process where they paid the publisher all the costs. This process is very expensive moreover such subsidy publishers have no interest in marketing and promoting the book, therefore, it often happens that only a few family members and friends read the subsidy book. The advent of the new electronic process as practiced by Lulu is a death knell for the subsidy publisher. If it still survives, it is only because word of the new process has not got around.

Besides the speed of the process, the author has full control on the rights to his book as well as its content and design in the new publishing model. The new process means that many more books can now be published and printed then was possible earlier. There is a flip side to this as well; the book published by such a process may be a poor one. On the other hand it may also be very good. With the traditional process, a buyer is certain of a degree of quality. Eventually the readers will decide. A second disadvantage of the new process is that individual authors do not have the resources and abilities to promote their books as compared to traditional publishers.

Eventually, it is very likely that a new hybrid model will emerge from a partnership of the traditional publisher with the new technology gurus like lulu. In this hybrid process, a panel of traditional publishers (to cover different categories) will get access to the lulu database of books. They may select books from it to bring out a new edition through the traditional process by offering the authors a standard contract. Lulu would derive a commission from the sale of books. This could then become a win-win situation for all concerned.





New Revolutionary Models of Book Publishing and Death of the Subsidy Publishing