Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

I recently went to Lulu.com for a hardcover edition of To Summon The Blackbird, but going for their global distribution makes the book very expensive at the retailers--mine is $39.99, and that's below their recommended price. One place they distribute to is Ingram at http://www.ingramcontent.com/pages/ho...
I checked it out, and it seems much cheaper if you skip Lulu and go directly to Ingram. Has anybody checked this out?

I think I see at least one problem; they charge an up-front fee unless you order 50 books. Might be a good deal for established authors who sell a lot of hardcovers. Another problem is the contract you have to view and okay before proceeding. Not an easy read.

When I looked at Ingram they seemed to be aiming at small conventional publishers, not indie authors. It didn't feel like a safe environment for the likes of me.

They do invite indies, but, as you said, it doesn't feel safe to deal directly with them. I'll just continue to deal with them through Lulu, but I'm thinking of contracting the market back to just Lulu so I can sell it for $19.95 at Lulu instead of $39.99 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, and elsewhere.

That's dilemma with the POD people, isn't it? The likes of CreateSpace and Lulu, I mean. As printers, they can afford to sell your book directly at a much lower price than through a distributor. So listing only with them means you can price it lower or take a whacking big royalty and still be in the range. I suppose I choose expanded distribution because that gives the potential of seeing orders from libraries and bookstores, but really that's pure vanity. Nobody has ever bought my book that way. The other possible downside is that the paperback would not appear at all on Amazon, which makes it look less like a 'proper book' in my view, and could hurt ebook sales.

Perhaps the best answer is to list on one POD with expanded distribution, and another POD as direct-only. Then in marketing the book, you recommend the one you've chosen as direct (which would be Lulu for me).

I've been looking on the lulu site for a way to cut a book out of distribution and sell it only on lulu. This is not explicitly available as an option, so I've sent a help request in.

I wanted to upload a corrected file, and found you can't do that either--without going to a lot of trouble. I think the only way you can change much of anything except price is to unpublish it and start over. I may do that, and instead of the glossy cover, spring for the cloth cover with dust jacket. It's easy to make mistakes the first time, and they should make it easier to fix them. My book looks good, and I'm pleased with it, but after I approved it I found that I wanted to tweak a few things here and there. I've learned how to put pictures in, so I now want my picture in the back with the biography. I've already done this with the paperback.