"Free" Service PODs

This week I wanted to talk a little bit about "free" service PODs. I say free in quotes because this is still a business. They are still going to require some money to produce your book. However, if you're willing to do most, if not all the work yourself, you could see your book in print for less than other POD options.

It's very similar to the types of companies and programs I talked about last week, but these same companies, plus a few others have options that allow you to choose the help that you want, a la carte. So if you want editing, you can purchase just that.

Along with the things to consider that I included with the previous post, a couple other things are:

1. This is not really "free". It give you the option of picking and choosing the kind of help you are willing to pay for. It still could cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to go this route.

2. This has the lowest royalties of all the options, except for the "full service" POD. It still has more of a possible return than than traditional publishers, however.

Here is a brief (but not exhaustive) list of full service and "free service" companies if you want to do some more research on your own:

FULL SERVICE
AuthorHouse
Balboa Press
WestBow Press
Abbott Press
Outskirts Press

FREE SERVICE
CreateSpace
Lulu.com
Amazon POD

There is also another option, called Lightning Source which has none of the stigma attached to self publishing. Lightning Source is a company used by traditional publishers for print on demand services. If you can be a complete professional and still willing to do most of the work yourself, Lightning Source is the cheapest option of all the POD companies, minus any negative impressions about your work.

Next week we'll dig into the ebook single channel world!