Inspirations For Innovation

By Author: Alex Lee
Total Articles: 366
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Before becoming a teacher, I was a geek who built and repaired PCs, networks, and websites for a living. I continue to enjoy watching the trends in technology as they develop. After the death of TechTV, a cable channel I used to watch to stay updated, I've followed the Web endeavors of the hosts from that channel. In August 2005, 1 was listening to This Week in Tech when Bob Young, former CEO of Red Hat Linux and founder of Lulu.com, was the guest. As Young explained Lulu.com and print on demand, it was clear that he cared about authors as much as, ...
... if not more than, his company.

Young started Lulu.com because he was frustrated by his experience of the traditional publishing model. He was a published author whose book sold well, but it did not make him any money. He figured, "There's got to be a better model for publishing than the current publishing industry model where the publisher is in control of the author's content." He complained, "The publishing industry works as a bottleneck. The vast majority of good books never get published". He wanted to give authors more opportunities to publish their work and more reward for publishing. He explained that not only do printondemand authors control the copyright of their works, but printondemand authors receive a majority of the profit from the sale of a book. Young pointed out that this is "the reverse of the existing publishing industry."

Young also assured listeners that authors of printondemand books will be taken seriously by the readers. He asserted that Lulu.com is not a vanity press and claimed that the quality of the books is almost identical to traditionally published books. He bragged that "You could not tell the difference if you were not trained in the printing industry". This is true; one frequent comment about the books I have published using print on demand is, "This looks just like a real book." At the end of the show, host Leo Laporte tries to name Young as the man who "is now trying to put print on demand on the map," when Young interrupts and corrects him, insisting he is "trying to put authors on the map." I give Young credit for planting the seed that has now put my student authors on the publishing map.

Young's Lulucom is not the only printondemand website. Others, such as Blurb, Cafe Press, Create Space, and Word clay, offer similar options to Lulu.com. It is worth browsing these websites to see the different options available. I am often asked about the option of selling the books at bookstores or on Amazon. This requires paying to register an ISBN, a feature of many of the sites. This feature is also available if you buy a printondemand package from Amazon's Books urge site, Borders Personal Publishing, Author House, or Universe.

For teachers looking specifically for connections between education, parenting, and technology from the perspective of the tech community, I recommend listening to another show hosted by Leo Laporte called jumping Monkeys. I also recommend the International Society for Technology in Education, which is the organization I go to for best practices in educational technology.