PUBLISHING

8 hours ago

2 min read

Lulu Buy Button Does Not Need a Storefront to Sell Books

Lulu: Direct sales have had one stubborn barrier: you needed a shop. A Shopify subscription, a website, a payment setup, a fulfilment plan. Lulu just deleted most of that. Its new Direct Buy Button generates an embeddable button, product preview, or plain checkout link for any print book you've published with them. Lulu and Stripe handle payment, tax, printing, shipping, and fulfilment. It's free. You can drop it in a newsletter, put it in a social bio, or turn it into a QR code for the back of a conference badge. For an author who has wanted to keep more than 35% of a sale but didn't want to become a shipping department, this closes most of the gap.

Authors: Calculate Your Cost Per Copy Before You Set Prices

BookBaby: A lower cost per book can make a large order look irresistible, but when you look beyond the cheapest unit price, you get the real truth.

Before you commit to 25, 250, or 2,500 copies, start with a book printing calculator. It can help you understand how your book’s unique specifications and the quantity of books you want to order affect the total cost of the project, as well as the cost of each copy. It will also tell you the amount of money you’ll need to make back through sales. A printing calculator shows you the real cost of your book. It’s easy to think about printing costs as if every book starts out with a standard price. The truth is that printing your book depends on several factors, including:

Trim size

Page count

Binding stylePaper stock

Black-and-white or color interiors

Cover finish

Number of copies

A 150-page black-and-white paperback won’t cost the same to print as a 300-page hardcover cookbook with full color photos. Even two books with the same page count can have very different costs depending on their physical specifications.

The Difference Between a Preface, an Introduction, and a Foreword

Lauren Davish, BookBaby: Do you need a preface or foreword in your book? Learn the difference in introductions, how they impact readers, and which is best to include in your manuscript.

Superman, Batman & More DC characters enter the public domain sooner than you think. Yahoo.