Thread: Self Publishing with Booksurge

I am troubled with the idea of using Lulu to produce a book, canceling the Lulu project, and then placing the file with a printer who hasn't taken the trouble Lulu has to make book production easy for a new author. Obviously, if this becomes usual practice for POD authors, Lulu will have to remove the free copy provision and generally make it harder to get this work done. We expect the printing companies to be ethical; we should be...

Neil Slade books UPDATE April 2008: I have stuck with Lightning Source for hard copies of my book Easy How To Paint A Car http://www.easypaintacar.com   and they produce excellent copies for me at a reasonable price when needed.  Getting the exact same book hard copy paperback from LULU costs nearly 3 times as much, so I depend on LS when I need copies to ship myself. Nevertheless, I do a good and steady business from LULU....

Hi Ron--I just realized I didn't answer your question.  I have the proof file from BookScourge but haven't looked at it for more than two weeks.  I'm supposed to make corrections but when I saw the first page it was a mess.  I've been trying to motivate myself to finish this.  Do you ever get the feeling of wishing the hurdles would just go away?  Especially when they...

I have to disagree, or at least give an alternative opinion of Booksurge. I have three books with Booksurge. I have done all the typesetting and cover design myself. You do have to understand how to properly manipulate photos and graphics to ensure that what you actually produce IS at least 300 dpi, because to make the graphic fit the format of the cover, you can't just increase the dimensions and expect that 300 dpi graphic to retain its...

Contact is not necessary. Enrol and a contact is assigned to you. Three actually... sales, technical and billing.

Writing the book is of course, the first step, then sending out hundreds of query letters to hundreds of publishers is next. Growing thicker skin as all the letters are returned with a variety of no's. Next you turn to self publishing, this is the route I took. As a member of the PEI Writers Guild I asked them, and booksurge was recommended. They are IMHO quite good, the quality of the print-paper and finished product in my case was very...

Anyone had experience with Booksurge reprinting a previously published book?  I have one of mine that went out of print in the 1970s (originally published by a mass market publisher). I got back the rights to it. Booksurge says that if I let them have two copies (since I don't have typescript any more, or disks) they can reprint for POD. It all sounds good but from what I've been hearing here (though all, apparently applying...

BOTTOM LINE: Whatever you do, do NOT publish at BOOKSURGE. It is a pain and (in the short-run as well as the long-run) outrageously expensive! They will make more mistakes that you can count (including pricing, royalty, affiliate etc.) and that will hurt you not only financially but also your reputation when your customers see that the prices are changing everyday for your books. I don't know why things are so bad with them, but based on...

Dear Book Writing Friends. Thank you Neil, for describing your POD experiences with BookSurge: incorrect types/fonts, poor binding, terrible paper etc. Your writing style is clear, insightful, and informative. I intend to refer to these points during an upcoming conference call with them. For three years, I wrote a wine column for 17 local newspapers in northern New Jersey and had an excellent relationship with my editor. Since 2001, I have...

Thank you all for such great information. Unfortunately, I'm still confused! I have a manuscript for a mystery novel, and I've grown weary of the endless wait for the inevitable rejection letter from potential agents and/or publishers... it's the old problem: you can't get a job without experience, and vice versa. I have no publishing contacts. Because I really do believe in my book and my characters, I've been...