Re-engineering the Book Business: Blurb CEO, Eileen Gittins (Part 6)

SM: If I were to publish books through Blurb based on my blog writings, I would need to be able to have a paperback that sells for $5-6. I would also need to have a customized storefront on my site that seamlessly ties into yours, so that you can fulfill the order. Can I do that? Why, or why not?

EG: Today our books are not the text-driven, black and white paperback style books you reference, but rather highly illustrated, color books. The classic “trade paperback” is much, much, less expensive to produce as the paper is uncoated (does not need to carry color), the costs to print b/w are much cheaper than color, and of course paperback bindery is also less expensive that hardcover. In future, Blurb will offer this text-driven product, but not yet. In fact, we have a tool called Blog Flipper, with which you can easily convert a blog to a book. It works with WordPress, TypePad, etc.

SM: Yes, but for pure text books, you are not at the right price-point. People don’t pay $30 for a text book. That needs to be in the $5-$10 range.

EG: That is true. We will get there. We have invested big $$ in building out our bookstores and managing all order processing, fulfillment, customer support, returns, international shipping etc. We have also built a whole array of free online marketing tools to help you get the word out to your various online audiences. Some of these include Blurb Badges which you can customize and put on your blog or site, Bookmark It (recommend to social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us and more), Recommend It (integrated tell a friend) – as well as tagging, key words, online Book Previews (look in book) and more. Custom storefronts will be a premium upgrade from Blurb – but not yet available.

SM: I have another photo-book project which is a combination of poetry and photography. The photography is by a well-known photographer who is going to have a major exhibition at the Getty Museum. The poetry is mine. Let’s say we do this project with Blurb. We would like the books to be distributed through the major museum stores, as well as through Amazon. How would that work?

EG: Well, first, I would die and go to heaven if you do the project with us, since I am a black and white photographer myself. But to answer your question, you would use the Blurb client to design the book, and we can print and sell it on demand. Say we charge $30 per book, you can mark it up by $8-10 (or more), and you keep the entire markup. If you want to invest in larger inventory, we can also print it for 30% cheaper using Offset. That would require a 700 copy minimum order.

If you want to place it in Amazon, you can buy an ISBN number, and we will put it on the book, with which, any retailer can market you. The advantage of Amazon is reach. The disadvantage is that they take 40% of the retail price of the book, so you
don’t make much money.

SM: Well, it was good talking with you. I am glad you are doing this. I hope you get to doing text books soon, as I am sure many of us, writers, would be happy to experiment with some blog books. I certainly will. And let me think about the poetry book 🙂

[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
[Part 4]
[Part 5]
[Part 6]

This segment is part 6 in the series : Re-engineering the Book Business: Blurb CEO, Eileen Gittins
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