Add new comment

I'd bet that Bowker's figures (the basis for this story) are based on ISBN usage. I'd also bet that the vast majority of self-pub books done using Lulu do not have ISBNs, since unless you expect to get bookstore sales, there's no good reason to have one. (And having one makes Lulu the publisher of record, rather than the author.) CreateSpace always requires an ISBN.

So: I suspect these numbers considerably under-report niche self-pubs via Lulu. Since Lulu's published more than two million items from more than one million authors during its decade, it's a strong suspicion.

Plain text

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.