Six-month progress report on Lulu

published: Mon, 30-Apr-2007   |   updated: Mon, 30-Apr-2007

It's been a couple of days short of six months since I made my book available for purchase on Lulu. Time for a quick retrospective.

(See here, here, and here for a recap on the story so far.)

Well, it's been almost boring of late. The book has been selling (I've sold a smidgeon less than 300 copies all told), but the rate of sales has been rapidly diminishing. I used to check sales every day in the beginning, but nowadays it's less than once a week. The first month I sold 187 copies, last month (that is, April 2007) I sold 10. From this, and the fact it wasn't a straight line graph downwards, more reverse-logarithmic, you can quickly determine that the initial enthusiasm for the reprint (which admittedly was very pent-up) dissipated pretty quickly. The book's ranking remains at around the 180 mark.

The tax accountant was quite impressed with my earnings from the book last year and was encouraging me to claim for everything I'd bought in order to help reprint the book. I jokingly tried to claim for the camera I'd used for taking the picture on the front of the book, but she wasn't having any of it. In the end, there wasn't anything I could legitimately claim for, so I got whacked for the full tax.

For some reason — and I'm sure I registered for it — I didn't get any kind of taxable income declaration from Lulu. Bizarre. Maybe it comes from being paid monthly through PayPal. Anyway, I printed off my payments report and we worked from that. I'll have to look into it for next year.

Other than that, there's nothing much to report. Every now and again I get an email from someone thanking me for making it available again (and at a cheaper price than before). Like clockwork, on the 15th of each month, Lulu pays me my earnings through PayPal. Like clockwork, throughout the following month, I buy stuff on eBay with it...