Printing Companies for Beta books

[Miss Java]

Have any of you went to one of the online publishers like lulu, to just make enough copies for your beta readers? If you don't buy any options for Amazon or such, would it still be considered self-publishing?

My thought is that it would make an easier format for my betas to read instead of going to kinkos and printing out a large stack of papers. But I don't want to do anything that would ruin my chance of getting published later on.

[Cindyh2k]

Miss Java,

You can print your book privately through lulu.com - the only person that has access to it would be you. I think if you went that route, it would not be considered published.

If I am not mistaken, I think I have read here on AW that a few authors use lulu.com in order to print their books for beta readers.

Cindy

[zpeteman]

I print things up on Lulu for beta readers as well as my own editing. It's totally private, no one ever need know you did it, so no, it doesn't make your book 'self-published'.

I think it's an invaluable service personally. It never fails that when it I think a MS is in perfect shape, I print it up as an actual book and reading it that way illuminates all sorts of pacing and 'white-space' issues I miss on paper or on the screen.

[Anthony Ravenscroft]

It really sucks, though, to have to comb through a bound paperback looking for marginal notes if they're critical -- & if they ain't, then why's they there?

And then doing it for the second copy. And the third copy. And the fourth....

At least with unbound sheets, I can set them side-by-side to compare.

So... like, when your betas get back to you, & they all slag Chapter 3, & they almost all think half your minor characters gotta go... do you do another run?

My feeling is that putting out bound galleys that early is an affectation, a cry of "look! look! see, I am indeed An Author!" rather than any sort of effective tool for writing or revising. A creative way to waste time, often.

[christinex]

I'm not so sure I agree with that -- I tend to be a very visual person, and I know that some things are much more obvious when I'm reading something that looks like a "real" book than a bunch of loose manuscript pages.

As other people in this thread have mentioned, as long as you make it only available to you, printing a "beta" copy through Lulu does not compromise your first publication rights.

[job]

What's the cost on LuLu compared to buying up a box of paper and printing your own?

Lulu would be single-spaced, right. Ordinary 'book' format.

[BlueTexas]

Lulu vs. a laser printer + paper = Lulu's cheaper. I self-pubbed a genealogy book for my family at Lulu, and it was much less than the same material my grandmother insisted must be done at her local Kinko's type place.

If it's made private, I don't believe that's condsidered published.

[christinex]

What's the cost on LuLu compared to buying up a box of paper and printing your own?

Lulu would be single-spaced, right. Ordinary 'book' format.

Yes, if you formatted it that way. For example, my novel (a 6x9 trade paperback) was 320 pages long (107K words) and cost around $13 (that includes shipping). IIRC, it was formatted in Adobe Garamond 12-point type (with leading of 13.5, I think).

You also have the option of getting it spiral-bound, which might not be a bad way to go for a beta copy, since it would be easier to lay it flat and mark it up.

[zpeteman]

It also makes it a lot easier to get beta readers to actually read it in a timely manner if it's bound. I've never met anyone outside of the publishing industry that can stand reading things unbound. But if you can hand them a trade paperback and ask them to read it and and get back to you, I find people are much more willing to carry it around, throw it in a carry-on, and read it in their spare time.

I also add blank pages for notes at the end of chapters and a fairly detailed questionnaire at the end of the book to prompt feedback.

All this for a few minutes work to format it to 6x9 and $15 bucks to have it shipped to the front door of a reader. That's a hard deal to beat.