A Quest Test - Dilemma - Published by Lulu

As some of you are aware, Lulu.com recently announced that they will now be offering their Published by Lulu Distribution Service free of charge. My guess is that this was likely a reaction to the fact that Amazon's Createspace was doing the same thing. In a nutshell, the Published by Lulu service allows users to have an ISBN, with Lulu as the named publisher.

While this sounds quite appealing to me, since, after all, this is what my Quest is all about, I'm a little leery of the deal. This is undoubtedly the mindset of many out there. So, instead of arbitrarily dropping Flagrant Foul into this program, I'm going to test it out with another story of mine.

For those scoring at home, I have been offering the first story from the Forester series, Dilemma, as an e-book, not only through Lulu.com, but also through Mobipocket and Amazon for their new Kindle device. To be honest, I had never intended Dilemma to be a standalone book, rather one of two stories that I was going to enventually package together in one volume (In case you were wondering, I'm about a quarter of the way through writing the second story, Unwritten. Stay tuned!).

However, with this new development, what's the harm in seeing what comes of it? So, after re-formatting the Word file and re-designing the front and back cover, the print edition of Dilemma will be on my doorstep later on this week for me to look over and approve.

So, we'll see how it goes!

30 Seconds...

Yep. You get the idea...

Someone Else's Quest

Since I've started my Quest, I thought I'd share the story of another writer who's documented their own Quest. Shannon Yarbrough, the author of The Other Side of What and, most recently, Stealing Wishes, created the POD Diary for Stealing Wishes. For anyone who plans to go on their own Quest, it's certainly worth a read.

Incidentally, Shannon also runs the Lulu Book Review, which features reviews of self-published books, including, I'm happy to say, Flagrant Foul. Plus, there's plenty of news about self-publishing as well. All in all, it's a great resource!

The Turning of the Promotional Wheel

I realize that the Quest can never get off the ground if nobody on the planet knows about me or the book. And it's great advice for anyone looking to get their project off the ground. So, with that, here's some things I've come up with.

Social Networking - I have dropped my info in the following places:

LinkedIn
MySpace
Plaxo/
Gather
Facebook

You get the idea. Be everywhere, not to mention my Twitter page.

I'm confident to reach the end of my Quest soon. Give it a ahot yourselves and see what you come up with!

The Quest Begins!

As I've explained already, I am working on trying to sell enough copies of my book, Flagrant Foul, to cover the costs of buying the Published by You distribution package from Lulu, at a retail price of $99.95.

So, I humbly ask of you, my visitor, a couple of things...

1. Donations are not needed. I have a product to sell, and you can find it at the http://www.flagrantfoul.com or the Flagrant Foul book page.
2. If you want to read an electronic version of the book, I'd be more than happy to give it to you. Drop me a line and I'll send you a PDF! All I ask is you tell me what you think!

Those are my requests. Let the games begin!