27 January 2008 by Published in: Civil War books and authors 11 comments

Having decided that we were going to take on the Monocacy project, I’ve immersed myself into the process of gathering research ideas and sources so as to develop our research strategy. Doing so is not only wise, it saves a lot of aggravation because we lay out a roadmap and then follow it to its conclusion. Of course, things always turn up unexpectedly and have to be dealt with, but for the most part, we try to stick to the plan.

Today, I spent some time going through the reference bibliographies of the U. S. Army’s Heritage Collection Online, looking for sources to use in the course of researching the Monocacy project. As I made my way through the many Virginia regiments that made up Early’s army, I noted that one of the available sources was through a self-publishing venue called Lulu.com. There are others, but Lulu is the only one of these companies that I have ever used.

Lulu provides an opportunity for authors to self-publish their work without having to incur the cost of printing, etc., as Lulu is a print-on-demand publisher (“POD”). The company charges nothing for the actual publishing of the work since it’s all POD. The company charges $100 for a POD author to use the company’s distribution network, which is pretty much limited to the Lulu.com website. Editorial services are available for a fee, but my guess is that a lot of things get published there without the benefit of an editor’s services. You lay out your own work by following the templates that they recommend, send a PDF, and voila: you’re a published author.

Clearly, there is nothing like peer review of the work. Nobody vets this stuff to see whether it is historically accurate, or whether it’s worthy of publication. Companies like Lulu.com certainly democratize the publishing process, but, at the same time, they water it down by allowing anything to get into print irrespective of whether it’s worthy of publication. Personally, I find it difficult to take Lulu.com’s offerings seriously just for that reason. I guess it takes a case-by-case assessment to determine whether something is worthy or not. The particular volume that I was contemplating today is a set of soldier letters, so I have to imagine it might be worth investing in, simply because it’s difficult to screw up the transcription of someone else’s written words. However, I would have to think long and hard about one of their titles if it involved interpretation and analysis because I would not have any confidence that the work was reliable.

In fairness, Lulu.com does offer one extremely valuable service, and it’s one that I have utilized. For those willing to do the work to scan a public domain work that’s long out of print, Lulu.com’s POD model makes it possible to bring back books that otherwise would not pay to bother with. Virtually the entire catalog of Twin Commonwealths Publishers is done this way. The owners of Twin Commonwealths have scanned any number of extremely rare out-of-print works and made them available for purchase through Lulu.com’s POD model. I’ve purchased a couple of them, and they’re worth owning. For that sort of application, I can recommend the likes of Lulu.com.

Also, something like Lulu.com might be a fabulous way to keep the H. E. Howard Virginia Regimentals Series alive. It would make the books readily available to anyone who wanted them, but would not require the publisher to maintain any inventory. It seems to me that this would be a win-win resolution. I wonder if anyone has discussed this option with Harold Howard…..

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Comments

  1. Michael Aubrecht
    Mon 28th Jan 2008 at 9:58 am

    Eric, I know many Christian authors who use Lulu and as long as you do the marketing and promotion yourself, it a good deal. They make quality books for sure and open the door to many writers who otherwise would not otherwise have a publishing deal.

  2. Mon 28th Jan 2008 at 12:24 pm

    Michael,

    Perhaps, but that begs the question of whether these writers SHOULD have publishing deals. In other words, is their work worthy of publication?

    Without some controls, it seems to me that there’s a lot of bad work being published that shouldn’t.

    Eric

  3. Michael Aubrecht
    Mon 28th Jan 2008 at 1:54 pm

    I agree Eric that there is a lot of poor stuff coming out, but a lot of these people (mostly fiction – mostly children’s) that I know are really good Christian writers with no finances or networks to get their foot in the door. Lulu allows them to get their feet wet. That’s what Publish America (a POD) did for me. Without getting a couple books out I would have never been signed by The History Press or Partiot Press. I look at these PODs as ways to get books printed – they have to stand (and sell) on their own after that.

  4. Mon 28th Jan 2008 at 4:37 pm

    “. . . simply because it’s difficult to screw up the transcription of someone else’s written words.”

    Eric,

    I just wanted to mention that there’s a very interesting book, Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman, devoted to recounting a multitude of instances where transcription was less than accurate, either intentionally or not.

    ~Bridget

  5. Teej Smith
    Mon 28th Jan 2008 at 5:35 pm

    The particular volume that I was contemplating today is a set of soldier letters, so I have to imagine it might be worth investing in, simply because it’s difficult to screw up the transcription of someone else’s written words.

    Sorry, Eric, no way would I accept someone else’s transcription if I had access to the originals or copies of the originals. One thing I’ve learned is that you have to familiarize yourself with a person’s writing style. This is particularly true when you’re having difficulty making out a word that can change the meaning of a whole sentence if not the whole letter. It becomes even more important when dealing with letters written in another century with it’s own brand of shorthand and slang.

    Teej

  6. Mon 28th Jan 2008 at 7:09 pm

    One response to the “should they be published?” question would be “you don’t have to buy it, you know?”

    Short of time travel, we are all like the proverbial blind men feeing the elephant to some degree. Some will gather more information than others, for sure. And still others are able to relate what they know better. But none can say the subject is completely detailed without some doubt.

    I do worry that the “publish or die” standards within academia has served to water down the offerings. I once remarked to my graduate professor, “to throw an unpublished Confederate memoir into a room of my peers would be equivalent to tossing a raw piece of meat in the alligator pit.”

    A well researched offering should stand on its own merit, particularly if the prose is delivered with resonance. Shouldn’t be a concern where or by whom it was published.

  7. Don
    Mon 28th Jan 2008 at 7:28 pm

    “Sorry, Eric, no way would I accept someone else’s transcription if I had access to the originals or copies of the originals. One thing I’ve learned is that you have to familiarize yourself with a person’s writing style. This is particularly true when you’re having difficulty making out a word that can change the meaning of a whole sentence if not the whole letter. It becomes even more important when dealing with letters written in another century with it’s own brand of shorthand and slang. ”

    Amen, Teej. Good old Charlie Bates has really worked over both my eyesight and my dictionary, and his penmanship’s actually pretty good.

  8. Mon 28th Jan 2008 at 8:19 pm

    Hello all

    A slightly different take, related to Caswain’s observation. As a publisher, author, editor, and publishing consultant, let me share a few things that roll around in my head every so often.

    First, there are at least (best guesstimate) 1,000,000 manuscripts that remain unpublished, year in and year out. I think the number is probably double that. (I evaluated a business proposition a few years ago in an effort to monetize that extra-Amazon market.)

    Second, agents and acquisitions editors are gatekeepers. As the publishing world consolidates, there are fewer publishing channels in the traditional sense. These gatekeepers determine what the vast majority of the people CAN read, and WILL read. Think about that for a few moments.

    I know for a fact that somewhere, someone will find something of interest in nearly every manuscript. But if it remains unpublished, no one can read it.

    There are several million available (and not so readily available) books out there. The universe of written but unpublished manuscripts (in every genre) may well equal or approach that former figure. You will never hear of them, or read them–or have the opportunity to do so–if agents and major presses (largely in NYC area) say, “Sorry one time to many.” Disgusted authors throw it on a shelf and move one. Sad.

    So I love POD for that reason. PODs, however, are nearly impossible to sell into stores or distribution, and I can tell the quality difference immediately (it is toner ON paper, not ink IN the paper), so you can feel it with your fingertips.

    best

    –tps

  9. Tue 29th Jan 2008 at 8:29 pm

    Reminds me somewhat of the comments by the mainstream media about bloggers, who (ahem!) don’t have those “multiple layers of fact checking.”

    I did my own book because I couldn’t find anyone who was willing to do it my way. Publishing, like anything else, has styles and fads, and right now it’s the class/race/gender trinity. Or they may have just felt that there was no market for a book on infantry tactics. Personally I’m looking forward to your book on Ulric Dahlgren, but if I were a publisher I’d think twice about doing it since the market is quite limited. In fact a book like that — high quality, well written, but with a very limited market — is an ideal POD candidate.

    The other thing you run into is when you try to publish something on a new subject. The publisher looks and it and sez, hmm, there are no books on this topic, therefore there’s no market. He’d like you to do yet another one on proven subjects like Antietam, Gettysburg, or Abe Lincoln.

    As far as peer review goes, not everyone does it and there have been a number of scandals lately about fraudulent and/or plagiarized work in both academic and mainstream press.

    So…everything has to be evaluated on its own merits. As an aside I’ve found some very good info in self-published genealogical works.

  10. Dave Powell
    Wed 30th Jan 2008 at 7:49 am

    Self-publish still has the taint of “vanity press” where if you pay X, they will publish anything.:)

    But I have bought stuff off of POD sites. I am always really careful to vet it as much as possible first – seek a sample, etc. For the most part, in the long run I think these sites will enhance, not detract from, the overall publishing market.

    But it’s not really new, just a new format. Geneological libraries and society archives are full of such stuff, done years ago by someone on a mimeograph, spiral bound, etc. I always check the local history or Geneology room in whatever library I am working in for such shelving gems, just in case. Often – especially in smaller libraries – they aren’t very well catalogued.

    POD sites are just blurring the line between traditional publishing, Blogging, websites, etc. I welcome them, even though they don’t get a lot of my money at the moment. As for content, well, I think it has always been caveat emptor.

    Dave Powell

  11. Thu 27th Aug 2009 at 8:22 pm

    Great article! I just published a book through LuLu, but have wondered the same as you have (not about my own text of course!). The thing is, do editors fact-check? If so, what accounts for the errors we find in books published by non-POD’s?

    I’ve seen some real whoppers come out of the Publisher’s Clearing House, and lately, have resorted to treating book-buying as a box of chocolates no matter where the material comes from. You just never know what you’re going to get anymore…

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