Selling Your Book on Lulu

Lulu is a self-publishing platform supporting both print-on-demand and ebooks. Opening an account and uploading a book is straightforward.

What You’ll Need

• Your book in .doc or PDF format, formatted according to Lulu’s specific guidelines
• A book cover
• Keywords (Lulu limits these to a maximum of 3 words per keyword phrase)
• A blurb
• A price

Royalty

Lulu pays a strong royalty rate for ebooks: 90% of the profit goes to you, with Lulu keeping 10%. Print books work differently — 80% to you, 20% to Lulu — since Lulu also absorbs manufacturing costs on physical copies. Some sources report a one-time ebook distribution fee as well; it’s worth confirming current pricing directly on Lulu’s site before publishing, since this detail isn’t consistently documented across sources.

Payment

Lulu pays out monthly, though sales made through external retail partners (rather than Lulu.com directly) can take up to 8 weeks to report and post to your account due to how those retailers batch their sales reporting. Direct sales through Lulu.com itself post faster. Payments are made via PayPal or check.

Cost

Opening a Lulu account and listing your book is free — you only encounter costs around printing (for physical copies) and the potential ebook distribution fee mentioned above.

A Note on Reach

Lulu’s own bookstore is one channel, but Lulu also offers Global Distribution to reach retail partners like Apple Books and Barnes & Noble — worth checking whether that’s included by default or requires an extra step during setup, since distribution scope affects how much of Lulu’s higher royalty rate you’ll actually see in each specific sale.