Lulu says it publishes 4,000 new titles each week and already has a catalogue of 232,000 books. "Our success is that each week we publish between 10 and 20,000 titles; one at a time," said , the senior vice president of operations at the company, Andrew Pate.
The company is only five years old and says it is doubling in size every year. Earlier this year, I noted the growth of Blurb.com which published 80,000 titles during 2007.
The Guardian also discusses Booksurge.com and AuthorHouse as variations on the theme and notes the recent new relationship between Borders and Lulu. More from the article:
It is not only business people who want to self-publish. Lulu's Pate says an ageing population, with more money, more life experience and more time on their hands to write will combine with the new and improving technologies to help drive the self-publish business. The ubiquitous use of Microsoft Word together with desktop publishing software, digital printing technologies and workflow solutions linked to the internet and "bang, you have got a whole new market that could not exist without each of those pieces together".
1 comment:
The traditional publishing industry is, like those who were late to join the web and to accept social media marketing, living with its head stuck in the sand.
When traditionally published writers, such as the ones who attacked my self-publishing business model at Beneath the Cover last week, blatantly say ALL self-published authors write 'crap' (their word, not mine), they expose their elitist mindset - and are primed for surprise when the public moves to the new, engaged, personal style of POD and digital publishing.
The world does not revolve around the big four any longer.
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