Now I’ve heard of Lulu for self publishing, but until last week I hadn’t heard of Blurb.

Blurb is another US based book publishing website for those who want to create and print their own books, prices are very reasonable and they offer free ‘book production’ software called Booksmart.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, business books and the act of self publishing has been gathering pace over the last few years.

E-books of course have their place and are also highly popular, but statistics show that their is a greater perceived value of a book that is in print compared to an E-book that can be downloaded online.

Of course the cost of printing a book is typically much higher than the cost of producing an electronic E-book, so don’t expect to necessarily make more profit out of printed book just because you can charge more for each copy.

http://www.blurb.com/create/book/pricing

So what sort of books could one create via Blurb?
Aside from your bog standard business book rammed cover to cover with text and not much else, there is an opportunity to create more visually orientated books, for instance;

Look books/portfolios for designers and artists
Cookery books
High quality product catalogues
Album books - a product for photography studios maybe.
Product manuals

Their ‘get inspired’ page is really interesting, take a look; http://www.blurb.com/learn_more/flip/

That’s where I found the very cute Life Under A Rain Cloud, available for purchase from Curtis Elliott >> Buy It

Benefits
Aside from being able to print on demand, so you don’t end up with a large pile of books that you couldn’t sell, what other benefits are there to self publishing?

1. Space; As well as not needing to worry about shifting a job-lot of books, you also won’t have to concern yourself with storage issues. It’s a lot easier to find storage for 100 books at a time and order more when required rather than have 2000 of them turn up at your door.

2. Cold hard cash; Basically you make profit per book than if a publisher were also taking their cut, don’t forget to weigh this up against your time spent on marketing however. With the traditional route, typically the publisher will be doing the marketing for you.

3. Acceptance; Fewer and fewer publishing houses are willing to take a risk on new authors when they already have such successful sales from existing authors. With self publishing you are guaranteed the publisher (you) won’t turn you down.

Of course there is a downside to print on demand self publishing also and that includes;

1. The cost of the book production being higher per book - you don’t benefit from any bulk discounts you would if making a larger printing order instead of ‘print on demand’.

2. If you want to sell the book in bookstores, including online stores such as Amazon, you will need to buy an ISBN number for each book, and this can be costly. In addition you will need to register as a publisher first before an ISBN number can be issued to you.

3. You will need to arrange all of your own promotion and marketing. A job usually taken on by the publisher.

The downside of Blurb for print on demand self publishing is of course that it’s a US based website (although they will give prices in GBP), which makes shipping costs a tad high and delivery times extended, has anyone ever found a self publishing service similar to Blurb or Lulu, that is UK based?