Some five years ago, I had finished my”magnum opus” and was searching for a publisher. I sent my draft manuscript to a few Indian publishers, fully expecting a reply as to whether they were interested in the first book to document India’s search for and mastery of offshore oil technology.
I recalled that I had written my first book on ocean science and technology some twenty five years ago and had been called to a meeting with the Chairman of the National Book Trust to decide whether it should be published. Mr A.L.Dias looked at the book and said that he could not decide whether the book would be a flop or a best seller but that he would take a chance. That book has by now gone through four editions and still fetches me royalties. So I was expecting a reply but not the one I received. One said that they had too many manuscripts and could not even look at it for at least another six months, the other simply noted that they had the manuscript and would get to it some undetermined time in the future.
Since I was in a hurry- I wanted to see the book in my lifetime- I looked around for an alternative way of publishing and stumbled onto a website “lulu”. Despite its rather strange name, it offered budding authors a new way to publish and market their books.
In those early days these publishers were know as vanity publishers, who produced books at a price to the authors vain enough to want to see their name in print. But "lulu" democratized the process in a most interesting way. Now any author who had a manuscript he wanted converted into a book, would be helped to do it from the begining to the end. Thus people who wrote novels or dabbled in poety, or had a collection of receipes or photographs could all become authors and share their work with the rest of the world without jumping through the hoops of the self appointed editors of the publishing industry.
Once the author had completed his manuscript,"Lulu" offered to have it edited by an editor that you could select online. A number of editors were listed who had been rated by earlier authors and you had your pick of them. You negotiated a price and delivery time with them. The final draft could then be put into the publishing format. You could do it yourself or you could hire an online formatting expert to do it for you, again at a negotiated price. You could design your own cover or again have a design expert do it for you.
The best part of the arrangement was that you did not need to specify the number of copies you wanted printed. It was print on demand where the book was printed and bound and delivered as the orders came in.
The royalty structure was straightforward – lulu took 25 % of the cost of each book sold and the author kept the rest.
Lulu also offered a marketing plan where they would have the book reviewed, add the blurbs on the book jacket, obtain an ISBN number from the Library of Congress, place the book on various online booksellers like Amazon.com and even organize author parties in various cities. In short, they would do everything the normal publishing houses did except they did it with you in charge of the entire operation.
The best part of this new publishing system was that you could get your book into circulation within four months from the time you completed it.
Since then, the number of online publishing services has grown by leaps and bounds and the cartel of publishing houses has faced completion and indeed some of them are rapidly facing extinction. As an aspiring author, I say "good riddance" and " hooray for technology".
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