Publishing 'He Came For Me' as a Paperback

Over the last few weeks I have been busy organizing my book for publishing in a paperback form.

I eventually decided to publish with Lulu.com.  It was simple!

Lulu offers free publishing in a variety of formats - Paperback, Spiral Bound, Hard Cover with or without dust jacket or eBook.  They also offer packages for purchase if you wish to use their editors, distributors or marketing personnel. I am not ready to invest money to distribute or market my book so I chose the free publishing choice.

Lulu distributes your published work to Amazon.com for free!

The first step in the process is deciding what format you wish to publish your work. I decided upon a US trade size 6x9 Paperback, perfect bound but there are a variety of other choices. Lulu publishes your book in the format you decide upon without making any claims to ownership and publishing rights, except for that particular version of print you decide upon. You are still able to publish in a different format of print in the future as you hold ownership of your work.

Lulu uses a PDF file for publishing, but you can upload your book as a doc. or dox. file.  The important part to the process here is to include a Title Page at the front followed by a Copyright Page. At the back of the book it is also necessary to include one blank page. Lulu formats the file into a PDF document and you are able to download and review the file before continuing the Step by Step process.

The next step in the process is selecting whether you wish to use a Lulu ISBN number. Lulu issues a free ISBN number for your publication if you  desire this. Each publication of your book in a different format needs a different ISBN number, so Lulu's offer of a free ISBN is practical. This also makes your book available for distribution and sale through Lulu and their distributors.

Your next decision is your book cover.  Lulu.com has a 'Cover Wizard' which you can use to create your cover design or you can upload your own full cover design using the exact measurements required for the size of your publication. 

As I have a wonderful illustrator who designed my cover, I chose to use the full cover upload.  This process was the only difficult part of the publication process as you need to be logged into Lulu.com and have uploaded your manuscript to be given the measurements required for your cover.  So it was necessary to communicate with my illustrator what was required.  The measurements are linked to the number of pages in your book.   

For the 6x9 US Trade size I chose with 161 printed pages the measurements were 3184 pixels x 2775 pixels. It is important to save the cover file as a JPEG with a resolution of 300 dpi.  Once we overcame this hurdle the cover uploaded easily.

Continue the Step by Step process selecting the price you wish to sell your book for and whether to include a discount at Lulu.com.

I was lucky and was able to purchase one copy to proof read and approve for free as Lulu were having a special offer for the month of September.  I am now waiting for my very first copy of my book in Paperback to arrive in the post.