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mj
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Joined: December 20th, 2001, 12:32 pm

lulu.com

August 2nd, 2005, 9:14 am

anyone used this? If i published a book on it, would you still buy it?
 
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SierpinskyJanitor
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Joined: March 29th, 2005, 12:55 pm

lulu.com

August 2nd, 2005, 9:36 am

That´s truly amazing MJ. I had already mentioned that some time ago, but no one seemed to pay attention. It´s a true revolutionary publish-on-demand concept, since authors can post their own work, decide how should it be delivered, what sort of copyrights they´re willing to impose and the relative cuts for the publisher, author, etc. It´s a true revolution!
 
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madmax
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Joined: October 31st, 2003, 9:56 am

lulu.com

August 2nd, 2005, 10:27 am

If the topic is interesting and the book is good, why not ?I normally don't pay attention to the publisher, except when it is Wiley. Then I first want to look at it before getting it, because they publish too much things for most of them to have any value.
 
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zarnywhoop
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Joined: December 2nd, 2004, 5:39 pm

lulu.com

August 2nd, 2005, 12:31 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: mjanyone used this? If i published a book on it, would you still buy it?It would depend what the book was about and what kind of noises got made about it here...
 
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N
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Joined: May 9th, 2003, 8:26 pm

lulu.com

August 2nd, 2005, 1:16 pm

I always wait until I can buy a book used for a few bucks.
 
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DominicConnor
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Joined: July 14th, 2002, 3:00 am

lulu.com

August 2nd, 2005, 8:04 pm

anyone used this? If i published a book on it, would you still buy it?Yeah, quite probably, though it would be better if the sample stuff gave more of an idea of the actual contents, the first N pages are guff like acknolwedgements which tells us little.Given that 85% of the cover price gets absorbed by the publisher, bookshop, distributor et al seems to make a lot of sense.Would want to make sure it was a good quality print, and the book didn't just fall apart if I'm paying full price.Bruce Eckel has done very well with his Thinking in C++, Java etc series. He cites it as an arbitrage. It costs damn near a much to print a downlads web book as buying it, and you have 500 loose pages, which is a pain.Also of course, errors and updates can be fixed far more easily.
 
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PaperCut
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Joined: May 14th, 2004, 6:45 pm

lulu.com

August 2nd, 2005, 10:17 pm

QuoteOriginally posted by: mjanyone used this? If i published a book on it, would you still buy it?Yes, I would.
 
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player
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Joined: August 5th, 2002, 10:00 am

lulu.com

August 3rd, 2005, 2:45 pm

If its up to the quality of your other book then yes....
 
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madmax
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Joined: October 31st, 2003, 9:56 am

lulu.com

August 3rd, 2005, 3:07 pm

Quoteyou have 500 loose pages, which is a pain.Fortunately, you can remedy to that quite easily by yourself.
 
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mj
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Joined: December 20th, 2001, 12:32 pm

lulu.com

August 3rd, 2005, 6:05 pm

the main issues for me are1) what fraction of sales will I lose? (given that marketing and distribution will not be done by the publisher)2) will publishers start offering better deals to avoid losing their authors
 
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DominicConnor
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Joined: July 14th, 2002, 3:00 am

lulu.com

August 3rd, 2005, 6:41 pm

1what fraction of sales will I lose? (given that marketing and distribution will not be done by the publisher)Must say that I see very little marketing by publishers for non-fiction to the customer.Can you remeber the last advert you saw for a QF book ?Most of it seems to be persuading the book shops to stock it. Since the shops have finite space and considerably risk they need quite a lot of persuasion.However, this doesn't apply to on-line sales.will publishers start offering better deals to avoid losing their authorsI don't think so.The market is mildly competitive, so I don't think there is some huge profit margin that can be cut. But there is considerably inefficiency, so we might see them kicked into doing the job with less overhead.All the stock control problems and guessing how many to print or sell make the system quite inefficient.I'd love to know where QF books actually sell. My intuition is that 50% are sold through <20 shops in the world.Some of course are sold at university book shops, but the cost of specialist books means students are put off.One solution is print on demand at the bookshop itself. A customer can browse, and get the immediate gratification from taking the book home now, not wating.POD means it's easier to have different prices at (say) a university and a shop for professionals. Of course some leakage, but vastly less than if you tried it with physical books.A bookshop could then stock a vastly wider selection, and books would never go out of print.No reason that libraries couldn't get in on the act.
 
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player
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Joined: August 5th, 2002, 10:00 am

lulu.com

August 3rd, 2005, 9:06 pm

Quote what fraction of sales will I lose? (given that marketing and distribution will not be done by the publisher)Pardon my ignorance but why would you lose sales...If you're book is good and you wil maybe offering only a chapter or 2 on the the website for free why would you lose sales....Word of mouth of how good your book is would surely do the marketing for you???
 
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sparky3223
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Joined: May 2nd, 2002, 5:15 pm

lulu.com

August 4th, 2005, 4:10 am

QuoteOriginally posted by: madmaxQuoteyou have 500 loose pages, which is a pain.Fortunately, you can remedy to that quite easily by yourself.Yes, you print duplex, with 4 sides to 1 page (front and back, 2 pages each). Your 500 page book becomes 125 pages.
 
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madmax
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lulu.com

August 4th, 2005, 6:41 am

What about a quick and simple binding ?
 
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mj
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Joined: December 20th, 2001, 12:32 pm

lulu.com

August 4th, 2005, 6:51 am

Lulu does actually bind the book properly so that is not an issue.Why would it hurt sales?1. a lot of libraries buy anything published by CUP and other academic presses, I doubt they'd bother with lulu2. people see the publisher as a mark of quality3. people go the FWB or similar and browse before they buy4. people are not used to using Lulu5. publishers do more marketing than you might think. it's not clear how effective it is however. 6. would academics adopt a book on lulu as a course text, maybe, maybe not