Google Play Books Partner Center vs Lulu
March 03, 2024
45
Publish your books on Google Play and reach billions of readers around the world. Books on Google Play can be discovered and previewed on the world's most popular search engine through Google Books. The Play Books Partner Center makes it easy to upload content, set prices, and choose the countries where you want to sell your books.
44
Lulu pioneered the self-publishing industry and paved the way for people around the world to publish books and bring them to market, while allowing authors to retain full control of their work. Operating a global network, Lulu provides worldwide distribution so that authors can reach readers just about anywhere via print, e-readers and tablet devices. As the leading independent self-publishing company, Lulu has enabled people in more than 225 countries and territories to self-publish nearly two million publications, including 1.5 million books.
Google Play Books Partner Center vs Lulu in our news:
2024. Self-publishing platform Lulu integrates with website builder Wix
In the vast and often baffling galaxy of book selling, directly connecting with your audience is not just a good idea; it’s the secret sauce of revenue growth and loyal readership. With traditional retailers behaving more erratically than a Vogon poetry recital, Lulu Direct has rather cunningly engineered a way to bypass the whole bewildering mess. It links your very own ecommerce realm directly to Lulu’s intergalactic print-on-demand network. Now, thanks to the brilliant new integration with Wix, you can effortlessly plug your Wix site into Lulu Direct, allowing for direct book sales that you can track and manage with more ease than Marvin experiencing a rare good mood. True, Wix may not boast Shopify’s vast plugin constellation or WordPress’s endless tweakability, but its simplicity makes it ideal for navigating the dark and treacherous waters of website creation without needing a Babel fish.
2022. Lulu unveiles Cover Designer
In a galaxy not so far away, the folks at Lulu, the self-publishing platform with a penchant for simplifying the literary cosmos, have unleashed a shiny new gadget for crafting book covers. While seasoned designers and those who treat design software like a second language might still cozy up to a trusty book cover template, Lulu's cover wizard—erm, designer—is here to beam up anyone crafting books as heartfelt gifts, bespoke limited editions, or test runs for beta readers. This clever contraption takes the hassle out of calculating spine widths and positions (because, honestly, who wants to do that?) and works seamlessly with all Lulu trim sizes, though its paperback game is particularly strong. Users can play with templates, upload images, tinker with text boxes, shape-shift elements to their liking, and even generate an ISBN barcode with a few clicks. It’s practically a universal translator for book covers, ensuring anyone can boldly go where no amateur designer has gone before!
2018. Google reopened Play Books Publisher Program
The Google Publisher Program, which allowed independent authors to sell eBooks in the Google Play bookstore, was suspended in 2015 due to piracy issues. Until now, the only way authors and publishers could get their digital content onto the platform was through aggregators. Today, Google has reopened their Play Books publisher program and incorporated AI into the eBook submission process. Whenever a title is submitted, it will compare the text to other books in the Play Bookstore and if it is found to be similar, it will be automatically rejected. Digital books also have the option to enter an ISBN number, which will retrieve some eBook metadata and enable sales tracking via Nielsen. If you do not have an ISBN, Google will automatically assign you a GGKEY, which you can use on Google Books and Google Play.