lulu.com -- any good?

There's an entire section devoted to self-publication here.

Second, he's already used first publication rights by self-pubbing; a commercial publisher might balk at taking him on unless he can demonstrate incredibly good sales.

That might be the case for his self published books, but if he went from strength to strength and wrote another manuscript that he could submit to a mainstream publisher, he might get a good deal in the long run and that might enhance the sales of his self published book(s). That's just my take on the matter.

I've self published seven history books with Lulu. No big deal, but one day, one of them might be "picked up" or recognised. I can live in hope. Elizabethan and Victorian history is probably not everyone's cup of tea!

Barbara

Hi Fresie,
It's funny that you bring up this point because it was on another forum recently as well. Benpanced has a good point in that publishers are ultimately in the biz to make money. If you can show prior success in selling another book (maybe even the one you're trying to pitch) many are starting to take notice.

I posted about this on my blog with a link to a publisher making that exact point. The address is below if you want to pop over. Also, I was just on a teleseminar with Rick Frishman, renowned publicist turned publisher, who says sometimes doing it on your own is like the "farm team" approach in sports. Your friend also might want to check out Writer's Weekly.com because there's a good article there this week to on the subject.

One note about Lulu though, from what I've researched, their per unit (book) rates are quite high. There are other ways to go about it independently which will yield better prices and thus more profit for the author, it all depends on how hands on someone wants to be with the process.

It's great that you are helping your friend find the tools to make an educated decision! I wish you both the best.

Most commercial publishers don't consider self-published books a legitimate publishing credit. it stinks, i know, since lots of self-published books are quite well written, but that's the way it goes. However, if you can self publish and sell a lot of books in your market niche, a publisher may take a second look. The tricky thing about self publishing sales numbers is that if you self publish and sell a couple thousand copies, that will pique the publisher's interest--maybe there's a market for your book, after all. But the tricky part is that depending on your subject and the perceived market, those couple thousand sales may appear to the publisher to have already saturated the market for your book. So it's kind of a Catch-22. I know that I'd take a look at the writing of someone who managed to sell a couple thousand copies of a self-published book, because that's a hard thing to do and I would assume the writing is pretty good, or that the author had hit on a sellable subject and done a reasonable job. I might not take that book, but I'd take a look at the next one.