Shooting Themselves in the Foot: A Brief Reconsideration of Traditional and Self-Publishing
Anyone who reads this blog, or has in the past, knows that I am hypercritical of self-publishing. In some respects, the entire industry deserves it, since it is full of shady practices, shady “gurus,” liars, scammers, and so on. In a way, self-publishing is an industry that allows for such problems to grow and fester — not because SPing is evil, wrong, or whatever detractors want to call it, but because it is decentralized (there is no standard, no vetting, no gate-keeping, and so forth). Traditional publishers have always been a centralized authority on “artistic” matters, determining what should and shouldn’t be put on shelves, rejecting anything deemed “unpublishable,” and maintaining a kind of minimum standard of production (though there is some flexibility here). For the most part, this opposition was a no-brainer for people like me, who appreciate quality work, low-risk consumption, and so on. And then I read this (about cuts of editorial positions at traditional Canadian publishers): “We just couldn’t afford it,” said Gaspereau co-publisher Andrew Steeves, adding that he is happy to do the work himself. At the same time, he worries about the ultimate effect of industry-wide downsizing. “How do you cultivate a professional publishing ethic it you’re farming everything out?” Authors, finding today’s downsized publishers increasingly unwilling to invest their own resources in the often laborious process of polishing rough diamonds into marketable gems, are now often forced to hire their own editors – before even before submitting their manuscripts for publication. Toronto literary agent Anne McDermid saw the landscape changing two years ago, when a publisher told her, “I cannot purchase a book I need to spend 40 hours editing.” As a result, McDermid added, “we are now advising our authors that the material they present has got to be closer to the final draft than it ever used to be.” Sometimes the agents themselves act as pre-editors. “Or, for those authors who can afford it,” McDermid said, “the biggest-growing sector in Canadian publishing is the freelance editor.” First things first: I get it. It costs money to edit books, and while I think 40 hours of editing really isn’t that much, it is still a lengthy process. Publishers want to trim back and choose books that are more “ready to go.” But reading something like this makes me really wonder the following: what exactly do publishers have to offer me if they’re not even willing to put in the time to help make my book better? A distribution model? That’s quickly becoming useless from an economic position; ebooks are growing fast and I suspect they will overtake, or at least match, print books in the next ten years (on the outside — five on the inside). Authors increasingly don’t need publishers to make books available to a large reading market. In fact, the only barrier beyond a professionally-designed product for authors today is obscurity, but that’s a problem that traditionally published authors also face, though to a lesser degree. So what exactly are traditional publishers offering me, as a writer, that I cannot acquire for myself? If I’m going to be asked to pay for editing services prior to submission, then why wouldn’t I just hire a whole crew to put together a professionally-designed book and sell it on my own? You can’t run an entire business on distribution and book covers. In an increasingly competitive market, it seems like publishers are only shooting themselves in the foot. They’re looking at the market around them and saying “well, let’s just cut back and hope nobody notices.” Anyone paying attention sees that and thinks, “they’re reducing the value of their ‘service.’” This might be the first time I’ve actually thought that the big publishers might, in fact, fragment and die. I don’t think all publishers will go down the tubes, because there are some truly amazing small presses out there (at least in the SF/F world) and some imprints will certainly survive in some form or another based solely on the quality products they produce. But the rest are asking to die. You can’t go into a competitive market, offer drastically less than you ever did before, and then expect that your economic model will a) continue producing significant profit, or b) look appealing to authors. Maybe a) will stay true, since many publishers are flocking to celebrities just like TV producers are still flocking to reality T.V. But that’s not the reading world I’m going to be active in. The sad thing for traditional publishers is this: self-publishers, in general, have and continue to be innovative people, and it’s not a big stretch to think that they will figure out how to help readers find the quality products that they want (i.e., reduce the risk of buying books that don’t even meet a minimum standard of quality). Needless to say, self-publishing is looking more and more appealing to me. I haven’t made a full 180 yet, because the side of me that is bothered by self-publishing is still opposing the new paradigm, but if things keep going the way they are, you can bet I’ll start looking at things very differently. Now, I think it’s fair to acknowledge that the piece I took the above quote from is only talking about Canadian publishers. A quick Google search didn’t produce anything about U.S. publishers, though there were plenty of cuts during the Recession. If anyone has links that show the same about U.S. publishers from a reliable source, I would like to see it. It also seems ridiculous to have to bring up the age-old saying again, but it’s impossible to ignore: money flows to the writer. Period. What do you all think of this?
The Best Liars: Self-publishing and My New Dilemma
I’ve become tainted against self-publishing. That is probably clear to those of you who read this blog, since I’ve written a number of posts about self-publishers (see this label for others), but it has now become clear to me on a different level. I’ve said numerous times in the past that there are good self-publishers out there who produce good books, have honest production practices, and are friendly. But they are an astronomically small minority when set against all of the rest who are effectively some of the best liars and manipulators of any stripe (they give FOX News a run for their money in the spin department); the good folks are like the Maldives in a global warming world–the more the sea keeps rising, the more likely those tiny little islands are going to get buried under water. (Bear with me on this. I’ll get to my fully-developed point towards the end; I need context first.) For me, this is a huge problem, because I want to be able to trust that self-publishers can all be honest people. My experiences, however, have shown that the opposite is true. I’ve been approached too many times to count by people claiming to be traditionally published, who, upon further inspection, are anything but; I’ve met people who try to tell me and others things about traditional publishing that are patently false (or not representative of anything but a severe minority), who then shrug off reality as if everyone else is ignorant and needs to learn the valuable lessons of Mr. Hoity Toity; and I’ve read dozens and dozens of blog posts and (about) books on self-publishing that make glorious claims about self-publishing, deface traditional publishing by showing only the darkest sides of the worst of them, and generally offer lists of lies, half-truths, or misdirections, which creates a vacuum that makes it very difficult to know where to look to find honesty about your options as a writer. For every one good self-publisher I have met (honest people who don’t lie about their publishing status, who are dead honest about what it takes to self-publish, who say that self-publishing is not for everyone, etc.), there are hundreds of bad ones. The fact that the second group is actively fighting to make changes go in their favor is disconcerting, because what they are ushering in isn’t a world of quality-variety, but just any-old-variety. They want a world where readers become the filter; considering that these are the same people who claim that traditional publishers publish crap, it’s somewhat self-defeating–turning literature into a game of “who has the most resources” or “who can play popularity bingo the best” is not necessarily going to produce quality literature. And all of this creates a lot of problems for me, because there is nothing within self-publishing, with the exception of the chosen few, that I feel I can trust. It’s mired in a sea of lies and misinformation that nobody seems interested in dealing with or is actually equipped to do anything about. Everywhere I look, the same things appear. It makes sense to me why so many people have come out of the woodworks with an anti-traditional view of things: when all you have to look at are half-truths or flat-out lies, you start to adopt those views too. People like me take all of this and become even less friendly to the entire industry. Maybe we shouldn’t, but it can’t be helped. I personally don’t appreciate being lied to or deceived; I want to know what I’m getting into before I actually get into it, to a certain extent (obviously I don’t want to know the whole plot of a novel before I read it). For self-publishers, this might pose a problem, particularly ones that mean well and probably are quite good at what they do (in terms of the writing). I have no doubt that I’m missing out on a great number of good books by self-published authors, but the problem for me as a consumer is that finding these gems is not an easy task; I either have to do a lot of work to find the stuff worth buying, or I have to take an unnecessary risk. Most importantly, though, is that even with this one huge flaw in the self-publishing model, there is the greater flaw of the body of unofficial representatives who have done a fine job tarnishing the self-publishing name in the eyes of people like me (and there are a lot of us). The question is: what can be done to bring people like me back into the fold? I used to read self-published novels, but after too many bad experiences, I stopped. What ways can self-publishers change the way their game is played so that people like me can feel some sense of trust in the whole “indie” thing? I have ideas, but I don’t think those ideas are favored among self-publishing types. Some folks have rejected the idea of creating a filtering system of some sort for self-published books, and others have thought me crazy for suggesting that creating your own press and not making it clear that you’re self-published is deceptive. Plus, defacing traditionally publishing is not a good strategy; it might be an effective one, but it’s also an intellectually dishonest one, since it does more to suggest that there is less “right” with the side that wants to be “right” than it does to suggest that the other side is “wrong.” Are there campaigns for self-published authors that aren’t in some way centered on or a part of the anti-traditional camp? Lastly, what can self-publishers do to make me think there’s value in what they do? I realize that writing is important to most self-publishers, but that is a reason for most writes in general, regardless of publishing status. What really makes what self-publishers do valuable to consumers? I’d also really like to know what strategies are being done to make self-publishing
Self-publishing Fail: Achieving Weak Goals is Meaningless
I’m still on my anti-self-publishing kick, primarily because there has been a lot of really crazy things popping up on the Internet as of late, such as B&N’s decision to get their hands into the self-publishing pot. One post that bothered me the most recently was The Book Designer’s 26 Ways to Win At Self-Publishing. Overall, the list is quite poor, with the majority either failing completely as praise-worthy goals or falling short of being impressive, and only a few falling into the “good goal” category. Some of the “wins” seem to have more in common with the 40-year-old man who still lives in his mother’s basement who is going nowhere fast than with the guy who tries to run for President. They’re not goals so much as really sad ways to feel good about yourself when you’ve essentially achieved nothing. It’s sort of like saying I am proud of myself for waking up and breathing today, an action that, for most people, requires no effort whatsoever, and which pretty much everybody else did today. The list starts pretty much on the lowest scale possible and jumps around from meaningless to semi-praise-inducing. Take, for example, the first item: You finally get the book finished, printed and in your hand: you win. Explain to me why this is something to be proud of. Anyone can do this. I can waltz over and print out a book from Lulu and have it in my hands in five days, with very little cost to me (in effort or cash). Unless you live in a country without the Internet, or you have no arms and legs and had to type your whole novel with your nose, then I fail to see what is impressive about this goal. It’s a non-starter. To get excited about printing out the book that you self-published is like getting excited about finding your seat on the airplane. It’s on your ticket, dear…The only thing praise-worthy about this is that you wrote a book. That’s it. But even that is becoming less impressive these days, because anyone can write a book. Most people can’t write a good book, though, and if you manage that, then maybe you can get a little excited. The list doesn’t get better after the first item either, with the second being just as meaningless: At last you have a chance to fully explain the ideas you’ve been thinking and talking about for years: you win Couldn’t you have done this before you self-published? Why do you need to have a self-published book to tell people about your ideas and thoughts? There’s no magic barrier that can’t be crossed without SPing a book. Unless your family and friends don’t listen to you, in which case I’d wonder why you hang out with them, then really there’s no reason why this goal is even worth mentioning. And then there’s the fourth, eleventh, twelfth, fourteenth, seventeenth, twenty-fourth, and twenty-sixth: You send a copy of your book to your ex mother-in-law: you winYou gift wrap a copy and hand it to your mother, watching her unwrap it: you winYou send an autographed copy to your 8th grade English teacher: you winYou overhear coworkers talking, and one mentions that you’ve published a book: you winYour dad pulls you aside at the next family gathering and tells you how proud he is that you dedicated the book to him: you winA friend at a party asks if you’re still looking for an agent, and for a moment you don’t understand the question: you winYou start to think about other books you’ve always wanted to write and can now publish: you win So, if this list is getting at anything, it’s that you should be really proud of yourself for gift wrapping or sending your book to people, or proud that people you know paid attention to you long enough to soak up the fact that you “published” a book. This is starting to sound like a list for the underachiever, someone with very few serious goals in life. If this is what makes you happy to exist, then maybe you need to reassess your priorities. Children find these kinds of goals exciting, not adults. Why? Because these are the kinds of goals that children try to achieve. They don’t know any better. But perhaps most pressing and most misleading is number fifteen: Every one of the people you care about tell you how much they love your book: you win If American Idol has taught us anything, it’s that praise from the people who care about you (or that you care about) is not always reliable. Look at all the idiots on American Idol whose family didn’t have the heart to tell them that they sucked. We know they suck, but they didn’t because their family never bothered to be honest with them, thus sending them out to be crushed by the judges and the public (who gets so much pleasure out of their misery). If everyone is telling you they love your book, then maybe something is wrong. Even if they all are being honest, praise is meaningless if it isn’t accompanied by constructive criticism. If all you’re told is “this is wonderful,” how can you ever expect to improve? If you cut the list down to ten items, it’s not a bad list. There are some good goals, but, for the most part, the list is dominated by awfully pointless and plain stupid goals. Having low standards for success doesn’t suddenly make you a winner. You don’t see football players saying “if I manage to hold onto the ball for three seconds, I win.” Why? Because there’s nothing about that goal that is remotely impressive. It’s a weak goal, and weak goals are worth about as much as non-existent goals. Short of impressing your cadre of weak-goaled friends, saying you win and doing something that pretty much anyone can do is a waste of energy and time. Achieve
Self-publishing Lies and Myths: Deception and Unethical Practices
I’ve railed against this idea before in smaller form, but I wanted to address this particular self-publishing issue directly. A whole lot of self-publishers and the people that support them have been advocating the practice of creating individual “imprints” to market one’s book. Sue Collier recently blogged about this very concept, albeit rather briefly, in response to another blogger’s rejection of self-publishing. While I agree with Collier that self-publishing is a better route for non-fiction than fiction, I take issue with the “imprint” model that so many self-publishers have now begun to use, and for good reason: In addition, if you self-publish properly—start up your own imprint, purchase your own block of ISBNs, and have the book well edited and well designed—as opposed to going the subsidy route (often incorrectly called “self-publishing”), reviewers should have no idea you are self-published. Your book is simply a title from a new independent publisher. And there is no stigma there. The problem with this very idea is actually its goal: “reviewers should have no idea you are self-published.” That, obviously, extends to consumers of all stripes, and the practice is woefully unethical. The idea that a self-published author should go the extra step to essentially trick the consumer on the foundational level into thinking that a particular book was published by a real publisher is nothing short of deceptive. Why? Of all of the self-published authors I have seen doing this, none of them are open about the fact that they are self-published. They play the “I’m published just like *insert NYT bestelling author here*” role, despite having done nothing remotely similar. Some of them even lie when confronted about it, so desperate to keep up appearances that they won’t even admit the lie when all the facts are laid out in front of them (I’m looking at you zombie lady, whose “publisher” has a website made by her husband and thinks I’m too stupid to put two and two together). The problem with pretending to be traditionally published is that it is disingenuous. People who do this are not traditionally published. Yes, they might have produced a good piece of fiction in a nice exterior package, but they did not submit the manuscript to a publisher or an agent or go through any of the numerous processes involved in traditional publishing. Nobody sat with the manuscript and decided it deserved to be in print. Consumers are not always aware of the processes, but they do know that there is a difference between traditionally published and self-published, even if they don’t always get those differences correct. Most consumers would avoid a self-published book, perhaps to the detriment of an author who actually produced something of value. But that’s part of the game. Misrepresenting what you are is quite literally a deceptive act. I would liken this to putting a science fiction book in a romance novel package. When a customer buys that book, they expect a romance novel, not a science fiction one. It’s one thing to create a nice product, but it’s another to pretend that that product is something it is not. I would even go as far as to say this is no different than lying directly to the consumer, and consumers really don’t like to be lied to (as we’ve seen before with authors who have lied, such as that fellow that Oprah endorsed, and Sarah Palin–although, perhaps people liked Palin’s lies due to the hilarity they created). As far as unethical business practices go, this is one step from the top of my list–right below flat-out lying by self-publishers to authors about self-publishing and by companies who do the same. Publishers publish other people; self-publishers publish themselves. It’s a simple distinction. The solution to this practice is perhaps not as radical as one might think after reading all of the above. Creating an imprint is entirely plausible, if done right. I think the best way to do it without reaching into the unethical/deceptive spaces is to create an imprint that is your name. Consumers are smart enough to put two and two together. But, I doubt anyone will buy into that solution. There’s so much fear over the legitimate stigma attached to self-publishing that, for some, being deceptive and lying is much easier than trying to battle for respectability–stealing it is quicker and less painful. What this has all taught me is to be very cautious about the books I buy. If I’ve never heard of a publisher, I look them up, and dig. I do this because I don’t appreciate being lied to or deceived. Ever. It’s a pain in my backside, but I’m not willing to throw my money on something unless I know who the publisher is and that said publisher is legitimate. Self-publishing can make purchases of books a risk to the consumer, and I know a lot of people, right now and in the past, who don’t like to risk their money. And nobody wants to risk their money on something that was presented to them as a lie. Thoughts? Let me know in the comments.
Self-publishing Lies and Myths: Short Fiction and Poetry
Every couple of months I open a search list on my Tweetdeck for “self-publishing” and let it run for a few weeks before cutting it off again. I do this because it’s difficult to stomach the lies, misinformation, and overly optimistic nonsense that tends to flood that channel. I’m in another one of my phases and an article over at the Self Publishing Review grabbed my attention: “Self-publishing For the Short Fiction Writer“ I have a lot of problems with this article, most of which has to do with the author’s lack of information about her experiences with publishing. For example: As a short story author, usually you are paid on a cents-per-word basis and a couple free copies. Unless you sell your story to one of the bigger, well-known publications you won’t make more than 1-5 cents per word. Some pay nothing (and I do have a whole separate rant on non-paying markets; One of several pet peeves.) I’ve made a whopping $20.00 off of my shorter works. WOW! I really got rich doing things “the traditional way” didn’t I? For anyone who knows something about short fiction markets, this raises a lot of red flags. Where was this author submitting to? Why was she rejected if she submitted to major markets? What places did she get published in? Were they low-paying, but prestigious locations, which sometimes bring more to the table than money anyway? We have basically no information about this, and her post, thus, seems like more of a bitter “I could only get published in the lower end stuff because nobody liked me” rant than any sort of legitimate discussion about the short fiction market. Not to mention that there is no mention of how much she has made from the self-published collection of her work, which seems to me to be a very important thing to mention when you’re complaining about the pay rates of traditional venues. How many copies has she sold? No idea. My guess is “not that many.” She says she has made more that way than she ever had going the traditional route, but I have no idea how much that is on either end. Her argument is as devoid of substance as most anything I have seen in this anti-traditional vein. Oddly enough, it doesn’t stop there. She then gets a little uppity about the fact that her work is no longer in print, which, again, raises red flags. There are reprint markets out there. Lots of them. And many of them pay. Why didn’t she attempt to get them reprinted? I don’t know. She doesn’t say. Maybe she didn’t know (which raises another red flag, because anyone who wants to talk about the faults of traditional publishing should at least know how that system works). Perhaps the only grain of truth in the whole post is her very brief discussion of poetry. While there are good paying markets for poetry, it’s not unheard of, nor necessarily a bad idea, for poets to create their own collections and do “well.” By that, I mean that they may sell some copies, may get a little notice, but that might be the end of it. Self-published poetry collections don’t have an influence within the broader academic literary community, as told to me by a friend in the creative writing department at the University of Florida. If you’re wanting notice from academics, you really have to find a traditional publishing or an academic publisher (that’s not universal, but close enough to it). But poetry tends to have a better relationship to self-publishing than other form, and I think that works well enough for that particular literary genre. You won’t get rich either way, but I don’t think anyone becomes a poet to get rich. But where do the myths and the lies come in? Well, first things first, the post is disingenuous. By leaving out contextual information, the post is little more than a “you’re going to get paid like crap so you should do it yourself” myth. Maybe you won’t get paid like crap. Maybe you’ll sell a story to the New Yorker or Subtropics or one of the top genre markets like Clarkesworld or whatever. You don’t know. She doesn’t know either. Nobody knows. Likewise, getting paid $20 for a short story isn’t something to scoff at. That’s money you didn’t have before and now you have a publication under your belt. But the most pressing issue here is the assumption that not getting published by major avenues should act as the catalyst for self-publishing. The author is creating a very skewed and ridiculous picture of reality, one that discourages you from trying by intentionally leaving out seriously valuable information about traditional publishing (i.e. actual pay rates, which are sometimes in the thousands, depending on the market). If you care about your craft and the magazines you’re submitting to, then it should do the exact opposite. You should ALWAYS be working on your craft. Period. A rejection should never stop you. If you truly care about writing and having your work in print, then you should keep working at it, and hard, until you get there. Getting $20 at a smaller market for a work that didn’t cut it at a higher paying place isn’t something to be upset about. Use that as the vehicle to push you forward. Keep trying. And if you still can’t get published, reassess. Maybe your work is good and you’ve come a long way, but it’s not what XYZ publishes. If so, maybe self-publishing is okay, but don’t jump to that path just because you’ve failed or because you’re afraid you won’t get paid well. Get there by working hard and becoming a better writer. Rushing is stupid. The problem I have always had with so many self-publishers is the defeatist attitude: so many of them couldn’t take the rejection, on any level, and decided that somehow they’re too brilliant to not be in
A Few More Lies For the Ignorant (Part One)
So, having already spoken on the Harlequin mess, wasn’t I surprised to find this article over at Self-Publishing Review with a whole lot of nonsense for the price of zero (the post is a guest post, so I don’t know how well it reflects what the owners of the site wish to portray, since I am not a regular reader). I’m not going to do much to touch the author’s discussion of science publishing. Not only do we not know who the author is (it just says “guest post” and unless I missed something there is no author named), but he contradicts himself (or herself) in the post by pointing to links where people have done exactly what he/she has said isn’t happening (after all, Michio Kaku, one of the leading scientists in the world right now, has publicly denounced self-published science authors for producing nonsense). Where the author really falls off his or her rocker, is in regards to the backlash from Harlequin’s decision to create a vanity press. S/he goes through the four main complaints against Harlequin and says a lot of things that would sound like nonsense to anyone with a brain (or at least a brain that is flipped to the “on” position). First point: They are cashing in on their slush pile. The questions implicit in this is that the slush pile is of inherently less value than the accepted pile. There are plenty of reasons to believe this isn’t the case. Most novels have been in dozens of slush piles before they’ve been accepted. Does being in a slush pile mean a novel is inherently bad? Then nothing but Sarah Palin’s book would exist – hardly a ringing endorsement of editorial quality control over cynical marketing exploitation. First off, there are loads of reasons why book queries get rejected (too many for me to list them here, but you can look that up on your own). Some big reasons are: the book wasn’t right for the publisher (try someone else), the query was crap (get better at it), or the book was crap (write another one and try again). These aren’t universal, but they are common reasons, and you can’t assume that a publisher is wrong. Maybe your book really does suck, or maybe it just isn’t a good fit. Second, the fundamental problem with this point is that the slush pile isn’t the rejected pile. It’s the “to be read” pile. It is made up of manuscripts that haven’t yet been picked up by the editor and viewed. Being in the slush pile means you are just one of many trying to get published by a particular publisher. That’s it. Third, this is exactly what Harlequin is doing: cashing in on their slush pile. Instead of publishing that book legitimately, they want to recommend to authors they reject from their slush piles to head on over to their vanity press and pay Harlequin for the privilege of publication. They aren’t recommending the authors go to Lulu, which doesn’t require you to pay anything up front for a basic package. They are recommending authors that aren’t “good enough” for Harlequin’s traditional line spend thousands to get published by their vanity press line, with the fake hope that they might get snatched up by regular-Harlequin in the future if it turns out alright. If you don’t see something wrong with this, then maybe there’s something wrong with you. Second point: They’re exploiting naïve authors. Um, pardon me, but book publishers are expert at exploiting naïve authors. That’s why royalties tilt so harshly to publishers, why rights are exploited, why contracts are mind-numbing. Do you really think most publishers sit down with an author and works out a custom deal while patiently explaining the ins and outs, creating author-friendly options to ensure goodwill, and conceding contractual advantages willingly? How naïve do they think we are? Actually, royalties tilt heavily towards the publisher because the publisher puts a shitload of money into publishing an author’s book. See here for the breakdown for hardcover books. Royalty rates aren’t ideal, but books also are no longer the dominant mode of consumption these days, and publishers are forced by consumers to produce a lot of books in order to satiate the wandering tastes of consumers. But trying to say that authors get shafted by book publishers is hardly true of all publishers. If anything, booksellers are the ones getting shafted, since they often have to offer massive discounts just to sell the books at all, cutting into the large chunk they generally would keep at the end of the day. On the other side of things: this is why most authors recommend you get an agent. Agents are in the business to make you (the author) more money, because the more money you make, the more money they make. This is called mutual interest. Now, getting to the part about taking advantage of naive authors: publishers are hardly taking advantage. They don’t lie about anything (well, some of them have, but this is hardly normal of the business). They tell you straight up that you will be paid for your book (they don’t promise a particular rate at all) and that your book will be in bookstores. They hand you a contract that states exactly what you’re getting and some of them even recommend getting an agent. Vanity presses and a lot of self-publishing houses do the exact opposite. They paint a pretty picture of their print-model business so that unsuspecting authors will flock in and fork out their hard-earned dollars to print a book that a) will not be distributed in bookstores (though many of them say it will); and b) will likely not sell many copies or make you famous (another thing that many of them say is a good possibility). Lulu is one of the few honest self-publishing firms; they have gone on record to say that they want to sell few copies of millions of