After another round of edits I have printed a third version of my final manuscript from Lulu, ready for my beta readers. The two copies arrived on Saturday, and I’m keeping my fingers, toes and everything crossed that my beta readers will give it the double thumbs up so that it’s really, truly finished this time and ready for the next stage: typesetting.
I always use Lulu for printing as I find it handy. Some writers use KDP for printing drafts to proof read; the upside of this is that personally, I think the paper quality and binding through Amazon printing is of better quality than Lulu, but the downside is that you need to have the book available on pre-order, or already published to avail of author print copies. As I’m not at that stage yet – I haven’t yet properly formatted and typeset my manuscript – using KDP wouldn’t be suitable at this stage for me. Lulu allows you to either print privately, which is available only to you, or to enable public distribution, which requires an ISBN. I definitely recommend Lulu if you’re looking for a good quality printer to proof check your manuscript; it’s straightforward to use and relatively inexpensive to order a few personal copies.
So what’s next for my book? If my beta readers approve it, hopefully I can go ahead with typesetting and have it ready for ARC reviewers by summer. My anticipated release date will be in October this year. You can follow updates on my current projects page.
Leilanie Stewart 