I was finally able to chat with Dawson Vosburg, an author who got his start on Lulu with his first novel Double Life. He wrote this novel to apply for a contest (National Novel Writing Month) which was a challenge to write a novel in a month. While in forums he found a link to Lulu and this is when he knew he had to self-publishing. (He won the challenge. Certificate, but no prize, sigh.) I found Dawson while I was reading the LuluBlog and read an author interview on him. Struck by his age (14!) I was impressed and curious.
Dawson chose Lulu specifically because of its low-cost with no set up fee. (Just $49 for the ISBN). Most interesting to me was that he placed his book as a PDF in the "Ratings and Review" forum and "let them have at it" as part of the preliminary editing process. Dawson got 3 forum pages full of response.
When asked where Dawson found his help and community he said:
I first found it in Lulu's forums, but then I expanded more out into social networking. I was able to meet even more people through Twitter and Facebook and stay connected to the people in the forums to form a better relationship.His uses of social networking were both promotional and marketing. Twitter helped Dawson direct people towards his blog, contact people to review his book, and get an author interview. "Without Twitter, I wouldn't have even made it into my school newsletter." (Obviously, I had to know more about this remark.
First of all, one of my friends who was on twitter was going to be interviewed by Lulu's blog. I asked Lulu (who is also on twitter) how I would get an interview, and they set me up for one. When the interview was up, I told my English teacher who emailed it to everyone in the school's faculty. The one who writes the newsletter read the interview, followed me on Twitter, and actually interviewed me during my study hall to be put into the newsletter.I asked Dawson if he was an occasional Lulu forum user, or if he frequented the forums. "I frequent them. I like to return the favor others have given to me and give advice and feedback to the authors on the Lulu forums."
He also frequents the LuluBlog "finding it very useful to get to know about Lulu." Me, too.
I also wanted to know why he chose to self publish versus traditional publishing.
Self-publishing is better if you're an unknown author, but only if you want to have control over everything and you're a really do-it-yourself kind of person. But if you're really good and make a lot of sales, you can use POD as a doorway to traditional publishing. If you sell, say, 5 to 10 thousand copies, a publisher will notice.You can check out his blog here.
Dawson's book has been up since December 13, 2008 and has sold 113 copies.
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