...crunches some numbers on his LJ.

Thanks for the heads-up, Ben.

I've had some problems with Lulu and have been looking around for alternatives.

For a book like Play Unsafe, with a low page count, CreateSpace is a good alternative to Lulu: my cut of the cover price is almost exactly the same.

Also, I get listed on Amazon and get an ISBN.

I'll try them out and let you know.

Graham

I think there would be some value in doing a short print run of your book and selling them at cons and to shops in the London/UK direct (I'm thinking of the friendly retailers we list on here for starters).

Well, their binding is a little cheaper, their colour page fee is the cheapest I've ever seen, but they take a higher royalty and they don't seem to say whether that's a royalty on the profit or a royalty on the cover price, which could potentially make a big difference. They also don't seem to do hardbacks yet, unless I'm looking in the wrong place. Don't forget also that if you have one of their free ISBNs, the chances are that they will be putting themselves down as the publisher or point of contact in the forms so that they get all of the custom and prestige. Usually you have to buy at least the first block of ISBNs in a set of ten, although the agencies have been playing around with that rule recently and I don't know where they stand on the matter right now, however this would necessitate that all ISBNs bought by a particular company would be in that company's name.

Ash