Amazon KDP, Lulu.com, and Other Self Publishers
Hello Everybody,
If you are interested in self-publishing “low-content and no-content books”, everybody says Amazon KDP is highly saturated and it is difficult to sell.
That’s why, when I was starting my self-publishing journey, I intended to move my publishing in the future from Amazon KDP to Lulu.com.
And sell books on my .com site with Lulu Direct and Shopify.
However, when I checked Lulu Bookstore, I came across very low numbers of activity books like Sudoku books with very high prices. (200 page book is around 10 Euro). And prices are much more competitive at Amazon.com.
When I checked the printing cost on both websites I found the answer.
Amazon KDP Printing Costs (6x9 inch, 200 pages)
Lulu Printing Costs (6x9 inch, 200 pages)
Comparison of Amazon KDP and Lulu
While Lulu.com’s print cost is €6.02, Amazon KDP’s print cost is €3.15.
So, the printing costs of Lulu seem much higher.
I should express that Lulu’s price is for global distribution, as mentioned in the green text:
However, I'm not sure how Lulu's Global Distribution will increase your income. If you know about more advantages of Lulu’s Global Distribution, please write in the comments.
Lulu also allows global distribution including Amazon. In this condition, Amazon prints (PoD) and sends the book to the customer. And this causes an additional cost.
Conclusion
As a result of the comparison, I conclude Amazon KDP’s prices are very competitive.
The disadvantage of Amazon KDP is that it is the only marketplace place where your book is sold. Still, the biggest.
On Amazon, I recommend conducting thorough keyword research before creating your low or no-content books. This enables your book to have better sales and also you can increase your sales with advertising, social media, and reviews.
Within Lulu’s printing cost calculation, only coil-bound books are for sale only within LULU Bookstore, but the price does NOT come to a lower rate. So, it is NOT possible to sell PoD books on Lulu.com cheaper than Amazon KDP.
If you have suggestions to make cheaper print-on-demand books to sell on our Shopify pages (within our future plans) please write your suggestions in the comments.
I suggest you read my Amazon KDP for Beginners article if you haven’t yet.
I am also drafting articles about “My First 3 Paid Apps for KDP Journey” and “Email Newsletter” and I am starting to write “Monthly Summary” from April.
Thank you for reading and sharing…
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Sincerely