'Net Features : lulu

Ebooks Ready for Prime Time at Lulu

Michael Garrity — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:35:00 GMT

Since the eBook explosion, Lulu has been one of the top names in self-publishing and format conversion in the young industry, and now the company looks to shake things up a bit by releasing its new e-commerce platform (as well as adding some major upgrades to its website).

As reported a few weeks ago, Lulu has entered into a partnership with e-commerce platform provider Elastic Path to give readers and writers alike “the absolute best self-publishing experience for buying and selling” eBooks in various formats around the world.

Many of these enhancements are being included directly in Lulu’s new website, such as checkouts that don’t require users to register, faster browsing times, an enhanced international language/currency support, improved address validation and new customizable marketing tools for authors as part of the company’s free publishing services.

This new website infrastructure is meant to help increase the speed with which Lulu can unveil new features and updates for customers. Among these upcoming upgrades is will be APIs that will let businesses and publishers build Lulu’s e-commerce tools right into their own branded websites for free.

In addition to these new features on the website, Lulu is also looking to improve “author agility in a rapidly changing publishing industry” by making it easier for readers to find eBook content anywhere applicable on the Web, most notably in places they already shop, like the Amazon Kindle Store, the iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble Nook Bookstore.

All of these major changes will not affect Lulu’s previous primary service, the easy uploading and selling of eBook content that allows writers to set their own prices and keep as much as 90 percent of the profit for their work.

Evolving the Publishing Industry

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 01:00:00 GMT

Traditional publishing models are gone. That means content creators have more options, more control, and more power than ever before. In the world of traditional publishing you either evolve or devolve and some companies see the opportunities clearly in this new landscape.

Today’s news that open-publishing platform Lulu has partnered with e-commerce platform Elastic Path indicates this trend well. Through the partnership, content publishers will have new capabilities such as merchandising and custom sales campaigns, that will expand “creative control and freedom over their works” according to the announcement. For users of the often clunky, never clear Lulu system, a partnership on this level is way overdue.

“The Lulu Marketplace requires an ecommerce system capable of handling complex interactions like revenue tracking, partner commissions, easy discoverability, and customized storefronts,” says Bob Young, CEO and Founder of Lulu. “As Lulu and Elastic Path work together, we will create a new model of ecommerce for the publishing industry to follow as we help a new generation of creators sell more content to more readers more profitably than ever before.”

E-books Becoming Big Business

Mike Phillips — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 14:30:00 GMT

Research firm Yankee Group estimates that the U.S. e-book market will reach $2.7 billion in sales in 2013, up from just $313 million in 2009. That's good for a growth rate of 83 percent, above even paid mobile apps, at 72 percent.

Already, Amazon claims that Kindle e-books now outsell paperback books on Amazon.com. This is great news for authors but they are not the only ones who can benefit. One of the advantages of e-books is the efficiency in which they can be published. Websites such as LuLu.com and CreateSpace.com (Amazon) make it quite easy to publish an e-book across multiple retailer sites on any topic. For business owners, this presents an opportunity to offer yet another added value to their customers and even add revenue along the way.

Expertise in any industry can be used to create an e-book in short order, then sell that material or use it as a promotional or cross-sell incentive. Amazon recently announced Kindle Singles - e-books in the range of 5,000-30,000 words. This could mean publishing white papers, how-to's or even re-packaging a series of blog posts around a particular topic as an e-book. Kindle Singles are currently selling anywhere from $0.99-$2.99, in most cases. Amazon typically takes 30 percent of each sale.

One factor attributing to the growth of the e-book market is dropping prices - estimated to fall to an average of $7 in 2013, from an average of $9 in 2009, according to Yankee Group. But e-book pricing is a situation in flux. Other estimates claim that e-book prices will actually increase in the months and years ahead. And, just this week, the U.K. Office of Fair Trading announced that they are investigating pricing arrangements between book publishers and digital retailers - the so-called "agency pricing" model already under scrutiny in the U.S. In short, agency pricing sees the publisher command a set price for each title, regardless of the vendor selling the e-book. So, consumers are theoretically left without the ability to seek competitive prices. This would appear to violate laws regulating competition.

The e-book market is growing, and quickly. The market is also in its infancy, so variations are to be expected. Although pricing is still murky, at best, there is no doubt that opportunities are abundant.