My First Lulu.com E-book!

I'm feeling quite pleased with myself today, as I've just published my first title at the self-publishing site Lulu.com.

The title in question is Fifty Great Ideas for Creative Writing Teaching. It's actually a joint project between myself and the poet Simon Pitt (an old friend of mine). Here's a description of the book, as it appears on the Lulu web page:

Fifty Great Ideas for Creative Writing Teaching is by UK-based writers Simon Pitt and Nick Daws. As the name suggests, it is designed to help teachers who wish to include creative writing as an element in their teaching programmes. It is also intended for writers who work in schools (or would like to).

The workshops in Fifty Great Ideas For Creative Writing Teaching are designed to harness the educational potential of creative writing in the classroom, and all have been tried and tested in schools. Some are designed primarily as warm-ups, while others can easily keep a group occupied for an hour or more. The e-book includes advice on how the enthusiasm developed in writing workshops can be built upon, including hints and tips on self-publishing, inviting guest writers into schools, and so on. It concludes with a selection of useful websites.

Of course, I appreciate that only a minority of readers of this blog will be in the target market for Fifty Great Ideas for Creative Writing Teaching - but if you are, it's available for the bargain price of just 5 UK pounds (around $9.00 US)!

My main reason for mentioning it here, however, is to demonstrate that this really is a viable method of self-publishing your work and getting it out to a world-wide audience. Once I had the finished manuscript in Word format, it was literally a morning's work to sign up at Lulu.com, enter the required info using their Publishing Wizard, convert the file to PDF format and upload it, and see my (sorry, our!) e-book published on the site.

I chose to self-publish in e-book form only, but with Lulu.com you can also (or alternatively) publish in hard copy format. For every copy of your e-book sold the money is forwarded to you quarterly, less a 20% deduction for Lulu's charges. If you have your book published in paper format, obviously the costs are higher (so you would set a higher price to compensate for this).

I will be writing more about self-publishing soon, as I am convinced that with services such as Lulu.com, publishing your own work is becoming an increasingly attractive alternative to the traditional method of seeking a publisher.