“Lulu is the web’s premier independent publishing marketplace for digital do-it-yourselfers. It’s the only place on the web where you can publish, sell and buy any and all things digital — books, music, comics, photographs, movies, and well, you get the idea”Lulu was founded by Bob Young, who was also the co-founder of Red Hat, the world’s leading open source company.

One of the great things about LuLu is that you can get your very own professionally printed and bound books for fairly cheap, considering that is in short print. All Lulu asks in return is 20% commission over your customized royalty rate which you set. This is waived if you decided to make your content free to download. Otherwise, you are getting 80% of the royalties which is considerably better than the 15-20% margins you’d get at most major publishers.

I wish I knew about this in college, when I ink-jeted tons of books then hand binded them which took FOREVER and cost well over $60 for a 50 page book.(Kinkos was an option, but they seriously screwed up many deadlines) On Lulu you can upload a 50 page book, have a hardcover, have it professionally printed(it won’t bleed), and you’ll save tons of time. In a matter of days, you’ll have that great book to your house for a mere 12-20$! Otherwise, you can make it available digitally and make a handsome royalty out of it even if you only get say 100 downloads.

The idea behind is Lulu is to print or buy on demand. Major publishers print thousands of books which sometimes just sit around for years. Lulu creates books when needed. No wasted prints are ever made. The cost is a bit more, but for retailers, there is no dead storage space which costs money. This is a direct connection from creator to buyer, and no one in between to ramp up the prices more. Rock on Lulu!