Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2021 7:51:52 GMT
I've given up on support. Although they have fixed most of the bugs I reported. They took forever to respond and I'm still waiting after three months for a response to another problem. I might be leaving soon. No way to run a business Lulu. I find their support quite good actually. If they do not reply i msg them on facebook with the ticket number and they get onto it. Or i should say did as i reported lulu to the BBB. Long story short they refused to say or not if their reporting external sales system had a bug in it thus stopping sales being reported. I saw an alert on lulu website in late April saying missing monthly payments will be paid on the next payday. Mine wasn't. I had many issues with them. They were-- ebooks not listed, print books not listed. These were after price increases as the minimum cost of books went up and needed to be increased. Also the ui user interface ebook upload function was caught in a loop. This was reported fixed except mine lol. The revenue thing pissed me off the most. I do not care on the cash but wanted my book title list to see if my promoting was working. It's about the principal. After all this fruit cocktail of issues 2 things happened. My BBB issue is of no consequence. Like i said the cash don't matter. Their system needs fixing for the other writers hit by it. Lulu relisted a few of my ebooks that were in need of listing in the couple of weeks they were not due to my price increases to be above their new minimum prices. One book was an erotica title and it was seen by one of the sites and they refused it. Lulu used this reason to delete one of my accounts (their content section). Myself I also deleted my other account. Time to move on. 12 good years 1 bad year. I am glad to be off lulu and am moving on to other sites. If i had the skills/time/cash i would set up my own publisher. I knew someone who did just that long long ago. It is hard to do. My writing journey continues. I hope lulu fixes their site for all the tens of thousands of others with issues that causes stress. Writing is easy. The rest of the stuff is the hassle. It is not hard to do. Start backwards. Pick name, get ISBNs free from your country if you can, register a business for $45. Sole proprietorship, pick the Publishing category.
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Post by Ken on Jun 6, 2021 8:36:33 GMT
Depends what is meant by “set up own publisher”.
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Post by benziger on Jun 6, 2021 13:52:49 GMT
It depends on which country you live in. - Own company: This can be as a private person, "registered trader" or similar. In certain countries you can set up a legal entity for a handful of money, in other countries it costs 20,000 or more. - Commercial register entry: is compulsory in some countries, not in others. - ISBN: Canada and France are very (!) generous, i.e. free of charge. In all cases, larger contingents are much cheaper per book than just a pack of ten. Your local ISBN agency knows the prices for your country.
To set up Benziger-Émosson as "my own publisher" cost me €20.00 as I was to slow (I sent one letter some month later than I wrote it and in between they introduced a setup-fee to get free ISBN). But I know, that if I would live just 50km further north it would had cost a probably 100x more.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 6, 2021 14:17:40 GMT
Setting up a DBA [an individual Doing Business As] in the US varies by state, from a low of $10 to a high of $100. In Texas the cost range for a DBA is $15 to $25, far cheaper than setting up a LLC business [over $300].
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Post by Ken on Jun 6, 2021 15:24:51 GMT
Original question remains. What is meant?
It’s very easy to set up an entity describing one as a publisher. It’s very easy to setup legal businesses. It’s very easy to buy blocks of ISBNs.
But is that you want, the ability to just call yourself a publisher.
What about having books printed, not just your own, not just one or two? What about stock holding? What about advertising and promotions. What about handling sales to individuals? What about servicing the channel both in your home country but also abroad.
These are the normal things for a publisher.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 6, 2021 15:48:59 GMT
Original question remains. What is meant? It’s very easy to set up an entity describing one as a publisher. It’s very easy to setup legal businesses. It’s very easy to buy blocks of ISBNs. But is that you want, the ability to just call yourself a publisher. What about having books printed, not just your own, not just one or two? What about stock holding? What about advertising and promotions. What about handling sales to individuals? What about servicing the channel both in your home country but also abroad. These are the normal things for a publisher. Book publishers often don't own printing presses, they contract the work. Self Publishers can contract out offset print runs through a company like printninja.com with .
If stock holding refers to physical copies, those can be stored in a garage, a storage building, and so on.
Small publishers often contract advertising and associated promotions, which Self Publishers can do as well.
Sales to individuals are done online, also through brick and mortar [if set up with Ingrams [in the US] and offering the 55% discount to bookstores.
It's as simple [euphemistically speaking] or as difficult as the individuals involved want to make it.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 13, 2021 22:05:48 GMT
Thanx on the very many varied and detailed replies. I was thinking ebook publisher in EPUB/PDF format type thing. But there are many online sites for such a thing like lulu/kobo/smashwords etc already. Anything i did like that would be one more of many. I think learning the editing side professionally would be very needed but many software programs do it for you. And the payment side linked to paypal and other methods. Print books could be contracted out to a printer locally. The post there is the killer tho i think. Anyone find that on print books? I knew writers who set up a publisher in the 00s and did PDF ebooks no EPUB then. And yes any business would need to be registered and official to local rules.
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