Self-publising your book.

You can get your sample copies from lulu and it'll probably cost less than your local printer. Lulu asks that you always get at least one sample copy of your book before you release it to the public or set it up for distribution. They want you to look it over carefully and make sure it's exactly as you want it.

Thanks for the info.

That's alright, mipen, I would recommend Lulu to anyone who is serious about self-publishing.

Oh yes, I agree, a fascinating learning experience. Formatting my first book, converting it to pdf, designing the covers etc. Drove me nuts at first but now I love it. I started with a 40 page booklet on lulu (http://lulu.com/lougrantt) and then did the book on building our house. Finally, once I felt comfortable with the whole process, I put the novel up there. One thing I learned that I'll pass along is to eschew black covers. They show every smudge and fingerprint. Thanks for looking at my amazon page. I just don't know what else to do. I get emails from ppl saying how much they loved the book. I thank them and ask them to write the review on amazon but... oh well. Did you get the distribution package for your books on lulu? I see you have a blog there. I didn't do that because I'm notoriously bad at keeping up a blog. I have one at blogspot. It's been weeks, maybe longer, since I posted. So bad. But I have a hit counter on it and I'm not overwhelmed with visitors either. Yup, writing is easy. Selling is hard.

I'll check out your books, Scribbler. My books are published through Lulu at www.lulu.com/richardjames. The great thing about Lulu is that there are no set-up costs to get your works listed and produced. All you have to do is upload a file and have it converted into a print document. Also I found it a lot of fun figuring out how to format my documenst properly. It is indeed a good idea to order at least one copy of your book before you make it available to make sure everything is in order. It's a great system but as always it's hard to find the resources to promote your published works.

Dear Scribbler, It's hard to see what more you can do to present your book. I had a look and you've got a good cover picture, an attractive description of the book and positive reader reviews. I noticed you hadn't applied any tags to the book yourself. But other than that I think your book is well presented. It's a hard game, this self-publishing but it is an interesting learning process, don't you think?