Hi all, anyone with a legal inclination help out? If you publish say on Lulu, can you still offer the book to another (more traditional) publisher? I ask as I have the possibility of sending a PDF manuscript to a publisher and as Lulu I believe state that they are not the publishers, only the printers (or have I got that wrong?). As Lulu has decided to end its community/knowledge Base I though I'd try to clarify the point here before a slip up! Cheers Ben.
As far as I know, Lulu/similar sites can't stop you offering your work to other publishers (I could be wrong on this, and I'm sure even if not there are exceptions, but you should be able to find out quite easily if you have some sort of contract with them or just look on their site) because you still own the copyright for the work. BUT, whether that's true or not (I'm fairly sure it is in most cases but people feel free to correct me), most traditional publishers - and most self-publishing companies - will say something along the lines of "we don't accept material that has already been published elsewhere". So while Lulu might/might not be okay with the whole situation, you're very unlikely to find anyone on the other end who would actually TAKE the work you're offering. Hope this is useful somewhat, interested to see if I've missed anything there. Piper
You normally own the copyright when you self publish, so in theory you can offer you book to a publisher for publication. Publishers will need to spend money and time to publish a book ,so are not keen on having competition. I have not used lulu , but it has a tainted reputation. One of the complaints is finding copies of your book on Amazon being sold by unknown traders . There may be a perfectly good explanation , but most publishers would prefer not to get involved with books that have been published before . However , it is always worth sending out the manuscript. If it is any good , they might be interested in something new.
