POD Covers and POD....

[alfreda89]

Everyone, I am about to plunge into the world of custom artwork for my Alfreda novels. (Yes, I have pretty much decided not to submit them to NYC. The agent will get other things from me, but I do not expect a house to offer me a contract I could sign.)

This is not going to be cheap, and apparently I need to decide up front which group I'm going to work with for the POD version. The templates vary. The artist can make a print cover and then create the ebook cover from it, but the reverse doesn't happen easily, if at all. So -- this is your chance to express yourself.

Have you tried any of the POD suppliers? Create Space? Lightning Source? Lulu? I'm going to search for quality vs.cost vs. distribution options. I want acid-free paper. We're talking three books that I hope convention vendors will be interested in trying out, that I hope might make their way into bookstores. But I also realize that sales online, even of print, may be all that will happen, since trade paperback books are so much higher in price (last I checked) than mass market books.

I'm interested in your experiences and opinions, if you would like to share them. You can contact me by message, if you want to comment privately.

I want to hear your war stories. I can only afford to do this once -- screwing up will set me back years and money I don't have to spare. So, anyone who has time to share their story? This is the moment.

And yes, I will share conclusions. An Excel spreadsheet will be born!

Thank you.

Comments

[davidlevine]

The book has been in stock on Amazon every time I've looked, but as I did not pay for any distribution beyond the basic it is not available at bn.com (though bn.com does list it as available from 3 resellers at $125 and up -- which is astonishing as it is still available from Amazon and Lulu at $20). Are you asking whether Barnes & Noble's brick and mortar stores will carry the book? I haven't tried, but I suspect the answer is no.

Like msagara, I did not expect to sell many copies of this book. It's a collection of blog posts from the crew of my "Mars" mission in Utah and I did it mostly so the crew members could have copies to send to their relatives. But I have sold a few copies to people interested in my "Mars" experience, and someone bought ten copies last year from lulu.com (I suspect it may have been the Mars Society) which resulted in an unexpected $150 check. But unlike msagara it has not been a "money sink" for me because I invested zero dollars in it. It was a couple weeks of my spare time to do the layout and cover and there were no up-front costs. However, I do have some experience in layout (fanzines and convention program books) and I wasn't trying to come up with a cover that would really sell, so I was able to avoid those expenses.