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Publish with own ISBN or not?

  • 29-03-2009 8:30pm
    #1
    mick.fr
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,974 ✭✭✭


    I have finished my small 2 books and so I am working on the distribution/selling side of things now.
    I have set up an account on Lulu.com but they are incredibly expensive.
    My first book is 36 pages (Yeah this is a logbook for something very specific) in color with basic saddle stich, it cots me about 9 euro+19 per book for their fees (ISBN etc).
    So basically that forces me to sell this thing about 30 euro and I will be making 3 euro per book (Stupid royalties fees % etc).
    Ok I know distributors are making the most of the money, but here that sound insane to me. I make 10%, they make 90%.

    So I was thinking should I just get my own ISBN and get my books printed in Ireland (Seen a few guys around D15 who can print cheap), then buy a distribution package for my book with Lulu and any other relevant vendor. they have a distri pack for 99 euro if I am not mistaken.

    My books are not gonna sell thousands and thousands, if I sell 200 I will be extremelly happy and lucky, but I am not ready to give 90% of my revenues to a distributor.

    Other than that I can also print and sell without ISBN, since it is very specialised content, I can get in touch with many forums and websites owners who deal with the subject.

    What do you think guys, anyone been there before?

    Cheers


Comments

  • #2
    Corina Duyn
    Closed Accounts Posts: 11 ✭Corina Duyn


    hi there

    I published my book Hatched in 2006 without ISBN, I had a print run of 500. It is possible to sell your book without the ISBN, although it does create some obstacles along the way, if you want to distibute the book more widely. The obstacles I came across were for example selling my book though Kenny's books website, but they worked around it and created a kind of ISBN for my book for their website. Apart from selling the book privately, I sold books in shops by approaching the bookshops individually.
    If you go with the ISBN, do be aware that this does require to deposit books, for free... with the main libraries of UK and Ireland, and to various institutions, like the universities.

    I am to publish a book again and this time will go for the ISBN, solely because I would like to see the book distributed more widely.

    Whatever you decide on the ISBN ,I would recomment to stay away from lulu and do the distributing yourself, or find an irish distributer. Doing it yourself takes a lot of time/effort, but you have the control.
    So, there are for an against... which ever way you go.
    Best of luck with your project. And ENJOY the process, it is quite amazing to see your own creation in real book form and on the shelves of shops and libraries!


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