I actually have a side-by-side comparison between PA & Lulu. Let me look...here.
Some Publish America supporters have claimed that PA is a good choice for them because they get two free books without having to spend any money. It is true that they aren’t required to spend any money, but over 90% of them buy at least a few copies of their book. Most of them buy the majority of the books they sell.
With this in mind, let’s compare Publish America with a self-publishing company, Lulu.com.
Copyright
PA: You must register the copyright at your own time and expense. The fee is $45, but you also provide a copy of your manuscript and pay shipping costs on that manuscript delivery.
Lulu: Register or not, it’s up to you. Your work is copyrighted the moment you write it in the United States and most other countries. If you want to register it, you can register it up to 60 days after publication (in the US).
Cover Design
PA: PA uses clip art from a fee-based library. They have used the same images on up to five different book covers. Unlike publishers who expect to sell books to the public, PA doesn’t pay professional artists to create specific images based on the manuscript.
Lulu: The author provides a cover image. It can be clip art, the writer’s own design, or a professional image costing thousands of dollars. Thousands of artists are available with a simple Internet search who will allow use of an existing image in exchange for the publicity. I’ve done it myself using Google Image search.
Changes after Publication
PA: PA typically refuses to make amendments to the text. On rare occasions, they have released revisions or second editions, but the decision is exclusively theirs.
Lulu: The author is able to release a second edition or a revision, add chapters, break the book into two volumes or anything else at any time.
Publisher Sales
PA: The average PA book sells about 75 copies, and the record-holder is an unsubstantiated claim of 5,200 copies. Over a thousand titles—about one title in 12—have not sold a single copy. You have to sell your book because PA doesn’t know how.
Of these copies sold, the author has personally bought an average of 40-50 copies, leaving PA selling about 30 copies through all of those websites it advertises, including Amazon.com. That figure also includes orders placed directly with PA and sold through bookstore distribution. Of those, many customers went to the website or Amazon.com because they met the author at a book signing or by chance in public. If the author hadn’t met them personally, those people would never have seen the book.
Lulu: Lulu’s sales figures are not available for public comparison. Also, they could be misleading because many people use their services for specific purposes, like printing 15 copies of a company operations manual, or 8 copies of a family history or a 30 copies of a public domain book for classroom use. Not all books published through Lulu are intended for commercial sales.
However, sales for self-published titles are fairly well known. They range from tens of copies of poetry or memoirs to thousands of copies of non-fiction works sold by authors with a solid platform.
Complimentary Copies
PA: Usually two.
Lulu: None.
Publisher Promotion
PA: PA does not have a publicist, bookstore distribution, or regular accounts direct to retailers. Amazon.com automatically lists information available on books when they are assigned an ISBN, and hundreds of other websites follow suit. However, as we’ve seen, the total cumulative effect of all of these hundreds of listings is an average of 30-40 books over the lifetime of the book. PA does not charge for this listing service.
Lulu: Lulu offers the same service for as part of its global distribution package for $99.95, which also includes the ISBN. If you intend to make your sales by direct customer contact such as at speaking engagements or through your own physical storefront, you don’t need an ISBN.
Bookstore Distribution
PA: PA does not have bookstore distribution. Furthermore, their low discount and PA’s lack of sales support makes it difficult for bookstores to order from them. If you want a book in a store, you have to arrange it yourself.
Lulu: Lulu does not have bookstore distribution. However, at least they don’t make it any harder on you than it already is.
Pricing
PA: PA sets the price, which averages 25% to 50% more than commercially published books with the same page count.
Lulu: You set the price. Lulu takes 20% of the gross profit. Thus, if your book costs $8.00 to print and you sell it for $20, you make $9.60 for each sale through Lulu and Lulu makes $2.40. However, for each sale you make yourself from stock on hand, you make $12.00. You’re perfectly welcome to price your books to be competitive on the marketplace.
If you just want the book “out there” and don’t expect to make any money, you’ll find that Lulu’s heart is also filled with agape. If you choose to sell the book for cost and seek no profit, they waive their 20% as well.
Exclusivity
PA: Exclusive publishing rights for 7 years. Some contracts include electronic publishing rights, also.
Lulu: Non-exclusive contract. You’re free to take your electronic sales elsewhere or even use other print publishing outlets at the same time. If you want to use Lulu to print individual review copies as needed of a book you published elsewhere, go ahead.
ISBN
PA: PA provides an ISBN at no charge
Lulu: You can provide your own (currently $225 for 10 from Bowker’s), buy a single ISBN for $149, or buy their global distribution package, which includes the ISBN among other things for $99.95.
Advance against Royalties
PA: An advance is the amount that the publisher thinks the author will earn in the first print run. Publish America is so confident in your book that they give you one dollar, clearly expecting the book to sell a whole copy all by itself. Commercial publishers have to work hard to earn back that advance that they pay the author. How hard do you think Publish America works in order to earn back that dollar?
Lulu: Lulu is not a publisher. They’re a printer. They don’t pay an advance.
Royalties Payment
PA: PA pays authors twice per year, often holding back royalties due under the claim that their customers have not yet paid for books on terms (such as “payment due within 30 days”). However, they print their books when they’re ordered. They never make books without receiving the money first. The “payment due within 30 days” story is a lie. Many authors have documentation for books ordered for which no royalties have been paid.
Lulu: Lulu pays royalties quarterly.
Accounting Transparency
PA: PA claims to allow authors to audit their books. However, they deny the author’s right to bring an accountant. Because an accountant is a professional bound by the restrictions of client confidentiality, they have no legal ground to stand on in denying this request.
Lulu: You can view Lulu sales at any time. They understand what accountants are for. At the time of this writing, no public complaints about Lulu denying royalty payments are on record.
Ending the Contract
PA: Authors wishing to be released from their contract might or might not be released. There seems to be no consistency among those released, by genre, sales history, geographical location, or anything that can be determined. Furthermore, PA seems to randomly end contracts on its own, again with no detectable pattern.
Lulu: You can cancel your account with Lulu at any time. Your request becomes effective within 30 days. No argument. No denial. No “tone letters”.
Integrity
PA: Many authors have claimed that PA has underreported sales and shorted royalties. Some authors who have had their rights returned have claimed to be denied royalties because “they’re no longer under contract.”
Publish America also published Prevent Cancer Today, a book composed entirely of material copied and pasted from websites.
Publish America has called local police and sent them to an author’s house over perfectly legitimate e-mails he sent them during the course of his business relationship. Using police to harass someone is illegal.
Lulu: Many small press publishers use Lulu for their printing.
Legal Action
PA: The Encyclopedia Britannica sued Publish America over the use of the name Publish Britannica. PA subsequently ceased operations in both Britain and Iceland.
Former PA author Phil Dolan successfully won an arbitration hearing against Publish America for failing to abide by the terms of its contract.
Other legal actions are in progress which cannot be disclosed at this time.
Lulu: No legal actions known.
Per-book Cost Comparison
Assumptions: 200 pages, 6 x 9 black & white trade paperback.
A random sampling of PA books shows that their most common price is $19.95. This price is also very near the mathematical mean for their prices, so it’s a good figure to use for mean, mode, and median. We’ll use this as our baseline price for a PA book in our comparison.
Copies Bought PA price Total Lulu price Total Savings w/Lulu
10 $9.98 $99.80 $8.54 $85.40 $14.40
20 $9.98 $199.60 $8.54 $170.80 $28.80
30 $9.98 $299.40 $8.16 $244.80 $54.60
40 $9.98 $399.20 $7.68 $307.20 $92.00
45 $9.98 $449.10 $7.52 $338.40 $110.70
50 $9.98 $499.00 $7.39 $369.50 $129.50
Note that this table assumes a 50% discount for author purchases from PA. That’s actually a best-case offering. Their normal discount is 40%, with occasional “specials” that they offer you several times a year where you can get 45%. If you read news of a lawsuit or arbitration hearing against PA, you can bet that you’ll get one of those special offer e-mails soon. It happens every time.
Back to the table.
Accounting for Lulu’s global distribution package, after which your book will have the same website presence that PA has, the same availability to bookstores, your financial break-even is about 45 books.
With either publishing option, you’ll sell most of your books yourself. Thus, you’ll make most of your money by buying books for resale.
Other Factors
Publishing with Publish America includes non-monetary costs, as well. The largest of these factors is the publishing rights. The author signs over publication rights to PA for 7 years in their standard contract.
Also, several Publish America authors have reported that the PA staff has added typographical and grammatical errors to their books. They do this by allowing errors to creep into their spell-check application and running the file through the spell-check. That’s their idea of “editing.” Lulu prints directly from the file you send them.
Both companies have message boards. PA’s message boards are frequented by writers whose sole experience comes primarily from Publish America. Lulu’s message boards are frequented by small-press publishers, self-publishers, and Lulu staff. PA’s administrators frequently delete discussions and ban users for asking questions like “Why didn’t I get paid the royalties you owe me?” and “my contract says x, when in fact y happened.” Lulu’s message boards are for professional discussion on a variety of related topics, with moderation to prevent personal attacks, spamming, and other Internet hazards. Complaints stay in place, where the Lulu staff is able to address them with confidence that the readers will be able to make an informed decision regarding the outcome.
Publish America takes months or years to publish your book, despite the “within one year” clause in their standard contract. You can publish a book with Lulu in a couple of hours. You can do it today if you like. If you need to make changes to the manuscript, or learn how to do some things, it might take a day or two.
Which is worth more—making $500 on sales now, or making $500 in sales next year? You can visit the net present value calculator at
http://www.investopedia.com/calculator/NetPresentValue.aspx if you want a serious answer, but I think we can all agree that money now is worth more than money later.
Finally, Lulu is not the only POD option available. It’s simply the easiest to use and probably the best-known. Others might be cheaper.
In short, people who say that PA was the best printing option for their book either
a) haven’t done a direct comparison between PA and other options, or
b) intend to sell fewer than 45 copies personally, intend to sell virtually no copies to strangers, and place no value on retaining editorial control, retaining their own publishing rights, or on customer service.
