The LSI Conspiracy

Those who know me know that while I don’t look down on someone for publishing with Lulu or CreateSpace, I am a big fan of the “start your own imprint” methodology of self-publishing.

What frustrates me often though is how few people in the grand scheme of things seem to have ever heard of Lightning Source. I will be forever grateful to Morris Rosenthal for writing the book: Print-on-demand Publishing, or I might just as easily still be in the dark on the issue. This book was where I learned about Lightning Source and it changed the entire way I viewed self-publishing.

Often when I hear discussions about self-publishing options I hear two things:

1. POD self-publishing companies like Lulu.com or Authorhouse.

2. Starting your own imprint and doing an offset print run.

As if there is no third option lying anywhere in the middle which *may* just be the best of both worlds, and I happen to think it is. That option is Lightning Source. Due to the fact that it seems so few self-publishing authors know about Lightning Source, I wonder if it’s not supposed to be a well-kept secret and that my spilling the beans might result in some kind of publishing hit being put out on me.

I’m going to take the risk to explain this option. (I’m pretty sure I’ve explained it before, but it was months ago.)

Lightning Source is a POD printer. As opposed to a POD publisher. This company is used by many NY publishers for parts of their backlists, university presses, small presses, and even authors set up as micropresses. In order to use them, you must have your own publishing company and own your own ISBN’s. So you will have chosen the “start your own imprint” option. There is a learning curve to working with LSI and creating files in the appropriate formats for them.

You’ll have to get your interior layout and book cover design taken care of elsewhere. Whether you do this yourself or hire out, you’ll have to adhere to the LSI file creation guide. If you don’t understand the LSI file creation guide, you will have to seek out someone who does for help because LSI expects to work with people who understand this… i.e. publishers.

And if you’re going to be a publisher, there is a learning curve. I get frustrated seeing time after time how “easy” it is said to be to self-publish your work. In some cases, yes. It’s easy if you use Lulu. It’s easy if you publish on the Kindle. There is very little learning curve to these two options and you can easily get someone else to take care of all the confusing parts for you.

But self-publishing in the sense of starting your own imprint is not “easy.” It’s not the hardest thing in the world either. It doesn’t require a degree in physics, but it does have a learning curve (let’s make a drinking game out of how many times I use this phrase), and it’s not for everyone.

But if it is for you, you might consider the POD through Lightning Source option.

So briefly I want to run through why I favor using LSI as a small imprint instead of doing an offset print run and instead of using something like Lulu.com

Why I prefer LSI to something like Lulu:

1. Lulu.com is a middle man. They get a large portion of their printing done by Lightning Source. With a little extra study and legwork, you can cut out that middle man and make a higher per book profit. (The exception here may be CreateSpace, but CreateSpace doesn’t hold your hand like Lulu does. You DO keep a much higher profit per book, but your only distribution option is Amazon.com. Not a bad option, but still only one place.)

2. You own your own ISBN’s; you are in total complete control of everything. You bring in all your outside vendors for editing/cover design/interior layout, however you get that done, and LSI just prints and offers distribution.

Why I prefer LSI to offset printing:

1. You don’t know how many books you’re going to sell. Doing a print run of almost any size is usually a losing proposition unless you know a LOT about publishing. Even then sometimes it is. With POD through LSI you never have to do any guesswork.

2. The investment is much smaller. You’ll pay a little bit over $100 to get your book uploaded into LSI’s database, pay the listing fee for the first year, and get a proof copy. As opposed to the thousands you’ll easily spend doing a print run. (If you do a short run print option that doesn’t run you into thousands, you will be cutting significantly into your profit margin since the cost per book might get about as high as POD through LSI would anyway. Then it’s a draw, except for the hassle/expense of the points below.)

3. NO Shipping and Warehousing. You can order super short runs (like say 25-50) directly from LSI to your door for when you may need them, or for selling some signed copies from your site or as giveaways, etc, but you don’t have to pay to warehouse a bunch of copies and then ship them out to whatever channels you’re selling through. There is no shipping charge for books sold into distribution through LSI (though there is shipping for what you order shipped directly to your house or to some other location not in the distribution network.)

4. Distribution. Okay so if you are still hung up on this offset printing model… great but how are you selling these books? Off your website? Even to sell through Amazon you would have to sell through Amazon Marketplace, which would eat up a chunk of your profit margin that you don’t need eaten when there are other ways. But where else are you selling the book? Unless your book is in Ingram, a bookstore is unlikely to be able to order from you. And what happens if/when someone walks into a bookstore and for whatever reason wants to order your book? (Yeah they can order it off Amazon, but not everybody is like that. Some still don’t trust shopping online even Amazon, and some want to go pick it up from the bookstore when it arrives. Not how I shop, but it doesn’t matter, some do.) Those are lost sales opportunities. And it is *tough* to get into Ingram (or Baker and Taylor) as a micropress. The discount you have to give them is greater as an individual micropress, assuming they even let you through the door.

LSI on the other hand has distribution partnerships with Ingram, Baker and Taylor, Amazon.com B&N.com as well as several others… including major distribution channels in the UK. And why would you sell only in the US when you can just as easily move books in the UK too? If you can tell me a coherent plan for doing this with an offset print run, I’d love to hear it.

5. LSI is a huge operation. They print hundreds of thousands of books daily. There is no way on God’s green earth that you are going to sell enough books that you overload their capabilities to produce. This means, you can use LSI indefinitely unless you start selling so crazy big that you want to do a large print run. But how many indies is this going to be a problem for? And won’t most of them just accept a traditional publishing contract if it gets that out of control anyway?

You better believe if you’re selling enough you feel LSI can’t keep up with it, every publisher on the east coast knows who you are and is courting you already. And they can take care of mass market rights.

This last point is a point of contention for me because I often hear: “Unless you are planning on selling less than 500 copies, you need to do an offset print run instead of POD.” I don’t agree on any level with this point. While the cost per book may be a bit higher than a larger print run even with LSI, you’d eat up that extra profit with shipping, warehousing and returns. It’s important to look at the big picture.

You could easily sell 20,000 copies in a year (and is this really a concern for you right now?) through LSI without any problems at all.

In short, LSI makes sense from every financial and distribution angle I can think of. I can understand those who would prefer to use Lulu or Authorhouse or CreateSpace because they don’t want to get over their head in publishing minutiae. “That” makes absolute sense to me, it IS a big learning curve (drink), but I don’t understand those just starting out self-publishing, wishing to create their own imprint, who are jumping right into a print run, unless they don’t fully grasp the difficulty and hidden costs of what they’re getting into, or they’ve never heard of LSI.

I have to get on a plane and leave the country now so the LSI people don’t get me for revealing this secret. I’ll let you know when it’s safe for me again.