About 2 weeks ago I found this really cool website. It does this thing that umm... is really cool. Sorry about not talking about what it does, but I used this to Get my wife's Valentine's Day present and she reads my blog here. For those of you who aren't my wife and are interested in what it is please click on more to find out. For those of you who are my wife ... well... you can learn about it on February 14th.

PS. Tags/Keywords will come after feb 14th as they incriminate this post.

The website is www.lulu.com and i am sure you are all wondering what in the world is lulu. Well, Lulu is a micropublisher meaning they publish small things... Just kidding, What it really means is they publish small orders of unique books, as small as a single book.

So the next question is what in the heck could I publish that i could give my wife for valentines day. Well the answer is simple.

1. She has always wanted to get published
2. She has a blog at kimberfus.blogspot.com called "The Dog Days of Kimberfus".
3. She thought it was cool when she heard about a few blogs put into book form.

I bet you could come to the same conclusion I did. That is to put the blog into print form Check out the cover to the right.

I have no doubt that she'll like it what do you think.











Well, So now i'll describe the process I went through to get this done.

1. I made a word file, Copied all the text, and formatted all the pages just the way I wanted them. Ensure that the page size is a size that Lulu can handle, 6x9, 8.5x11, among others.
   
2. (Optional) use Adobe Acrobat, CutePDF writer or some other program to print your file to a PDF, (I did this because I had color background that needed to go all the way to the edge and not have a white line at the edge of the page.)
3. Make a Lulu account, start a project, and upload your file. If you didn't create a PDF Lulu will create one for you after you upload it.
4. Design your cover, either using some stock photos and text overlays from lulu or designing your own front and back covers. Lulu will generate the spine. Of course if you are advanced you can make a wraparound cover but then that takes away some of the automatic things you can do with you cover like ISBN and the Lulu logo.
5. Order a copy of your own book.
6. Make your book publicly available for sale on Lulu.

Cost of books:
    Price of binding + Price of page * Number of pages = Production Cost (Your cost)

Example 100 pages of black and white as a 6x9 book, color are expensive.
    $4.53 + $0.02 * 100 = $6.53

Your Royalty, Lets say you want your book to cost $9.98
    ($9.98 - $6.53) * 80% = $2.76 ( you always get 80% of price above the Production cost, Lulu gets the other 20%)

Distribution, Lulu can sell you an ISBN number for 30 bucks and then you can buy your own books and take them to a local bookstore and ask them to sell it for you. The ISBN # Charge also gets you listed at amazon.com for a year. Of course you are always listed at Lulu.com for no charge without buying the ISBN.

There are global distribution options that cost $150 that allow all book wholesale companies to buy your book, I don't quite understand the wholesale price thing but its all on lulu if you want to know.

Needless to say i think its a great idea.