Any further explanation on this?

[john_jenatcomcastdotnet]

I spotted this little gem after doing my final revision:

"To account for hosting and transaction costs, we had to add a base price of $1.49 if you collect a creator revenue. However, if you want to give your download away for free, Lulu will waive this base price."

I don't exactly see this additional $1.49, but maybe I am wrong. Are they saying it's already in there, or will it be added to my final price as seen in the outside world?

[Blackbooks]

Sounds like Lulu just found another way to fleece its creators and make it less and less worthwhile to self-publish.

[Belinda D'Alessandro]

That's the fee for being able to enable DRM on eBook projects.

Lulu's commission for ebooks works the same way as Lulu's commission for print books, but the additional fee is for the DRM protection.

For example, if you set your revenue for a print book to $4, Lulu will add $1 to the price, being its 20% commission.

With the ebook pricing, if you set the price for your ebook at $5, Lulu will get 70c commission, your revenue for the ebook will be $2.81 the $1.49 is the fee for being able enable the DRM protection (as an educated guess, that's the fee that Lulu is charged to be able to enable DRM).

[john_jenatcomcastdotnet]

Much thanks. However, with the nature of my book being a military memoir, I considered e-book; but if you can imagine one sailor getting hold of my e-book on an aircraft carrier and say paying 5 bucks for it, it would be all over the ship for free within a day or so.

My biggest problem, therefore, would be the ability to download my work for free rather than people paying for it. This is why I will not enable e-book options.

[Belinda D'Alessandro]

That's the point of DRM if you don't want people to be able to give it away. Piracy can be a double edged sword - not getting paid against a bigger word of mouth advertising for those who liked the book.

However, I'm giving a Kindle version my ebook for free to military personnel serving outside the US who haven't been able to download to Kindle in the past (because of the Kindle restrictions on downloading outside in the US), but it's on the understanding that they don't give it to their family and friends and the family and friends have to pay for it if they want a copy. But that's my choice.

[kevinlomas]

that is and perhaps always will be a problem with digital media, is that it can be copied, even when protected. There are ways to make them readable only on 'readers' though by creating them as certain file types (although if you know where to look you can get reader emulators for PCs, but a lot of PC users seem to know very little )

If you wish to create (for free) 'real' e-books there are other places like lulu who specialise in such. Here is one >>> http://www.smashwords.com/

But I would have thought that even people on ships can occasionally nip off to buy real books. Unless they are in a submerged sub for a year :lol:

[durrantpublishing]

"Belinda D'Alessandro" wrote:

That's the fee for being able to enable DRM on eBook projects.

With the ebook pricing, if you set the price for your ebook at $5, Lulu will get 70c commission, your revenue for the ebook will be $2.81 the $1.49 is the fee for being able enable the DRM protection (as an educated guess, that's the fee that Lulu is charged to be able to enable DRM).

--

This is not correct.

The $1.49 commission applies whether or not you opt for DRM. Adding DRM is an additional $0.99.

So for a $5 eBook with DRM, the sale price is distributed as follows:

$1.49 - Base Price to Lulu
$0.99 - DRM fee to Lulu
$0.50 - 20% of remainder ($2.52) to Lulu
$2.02 - Remainder of sale price to creator

So Lulu gets nearly 60% of the sale price. Still not as bad as Amazon, but a /lot/ higher than 20%!

I wouldn't recommend DRM to anyone. It'll just annoy your paying customers, and won't stop anyone determined to distribute it anyway.

My ebook http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/7867672 is priced at $6 without DRM, and I get ($6-$1.49)*.8 = $3.61 per sale.

NB This new $1.49 'base price' only applies to new projects and revisions. If you have an existing PDF ebook for sale, Lulu's commission on that remains at a straight 20% until you revise it.

[ValerieJLong]

I just checked
http://www.lulu.com/en/help/download_faq#can_ebooks_be_free

Quote:

Is it free to sell my ebooks through Lulu?
There are no production costs when you offer your work in download format. We host your published work for free.
Last updated: 2009-10-16 15:57:27

--


A little further down the page we read:

Quote:

Digital download pricing example
Lulu does not charge you anything when you create your project or charge customers to download an item, so the price of a downloaded project is equal to the Creator Revenue that you set plus the Lulu Commission. There are no set up or production costs. If you choose to forego a Creator Revenue, Lulu waives its commission as well, and you can offer your digital media project for free.

This example shows the resulting selling price if you add a $2 Creator Revenue.

   $ 0.00   No setup charge, no production cost 
   + 2.00   Royalty 
   + 0.50   Lulu commission (25% of your Creator Revenue) 
   ======
   $ 2.50   Price

Price = Production Costs ($0) + Creator Revenue ($2) + Lulu Commission ($.50)
Last updated: 2009-10-16 15:58:08

--


It seems that there is a contradiction to the gem that John spotted.

Cheers, Val

[Carol_Housel]

This was in the Lulu Blog and I think it might help clear things up a little bit:

http://lulublog.com/2009/11/03/new-lulu-ebooks-are-here/

Quote:

As always, it’s still free to publish, and if you choose, you can continue to give away your digital content for free. For authors who want to sell eBooks and downloads, we’ve added a fixed $1.49 base price to cover our credit card processing and hosting expenses. Applying DRM (optional, eBooks only) adds $.99 to the base price to offset the fee charged by our DRM provider. To reiterate, authors never pay to publish, these fees are reflected in the list price and are only charged to the purchaser at purchase time.

--


I have asked that the above help node be updated to reflect this new change.

[ValerieJLong]

Thanks Carol. You should update your help pages accordingly and timely*. Not all people read the blog when they start a new project or update an existing one.

Cheers, Val


*On the internet, "timely" means within 24 hours or less. Spoken from the viewpoint of an IT project manager. :wink: