Hi Roy,

The reason I started looking for other on-demand publishers is that I have a quarterly magazine with a circulation of under 20 (actually 20, NOT 20 thousand), and I’ve been using Lulu to get them printed.  Lulu has a “no-touch” system wherein they can’t fix anything once you’ve placed the order, and this has caused me a problem twice.  It seems that the efficiencies they achieve by doing things that way are worth the troubles though, because I have not yet found a printer that will bind a small number of high quality product for me for as low a price.

If I may bend your ear for a moment… My impetus for the magazine was to demonstrate something that is mathematically obvious, but in a way that the general public can understand and which can profit those willing to put in the effort.  The mathematically obvious thing is that it is more useful to say one thing is better than another than to say whether or not a particular thing is good.  In fact, the material published in my magazine is discovered through technology that asks website visitors to decide which of two submissions they like better.

The reason I wanted to share this with you is that all big website companies these days are trying to figure out how to balance the participation of site visitors against the provision of content that brings them back for more.  It seems to me that the technology my site employs goes a long way to achieving this balance.  As someone at Amazon who knows about what my site is doing, you may prove to be a valuable contact.  In a nutshell, user participation is generally restricted to absolute judgements (“did you like this?”), but when it is expanded to allow relative judgments (“which did you like more?”), it becomes more engaging and also more valuable.  If this idea interests Amazon, I’m available to explain more.

Yay Dave!
Excellent letter, I hope they do ask you to explain further

hello sir,

i am prem,

I am the author of two books that I have published through Booksurge. I am writing this guide with the assumption that you have already made the decision to self-publish a book and to use Booksurge. There are plenty of options when it comes to ways to self-publish a book. Booksurge is one of the better options. I am also proceeding with the assumption that you will be using the Author’s Express option rather than one of the other packages. The reason for this assumption is for completeness. For a fee, Booksurge will do nearly anything except for writing the manuscript. As you follow the process laid out in this guide, you can stop at any point after the creation of the manuscript and pay Booksurge to do the rest of the work or a portion of the rest of the work.

I did not use Booksurge, so I don’t know how much help I can be.  What is up with your signature?  You might want to check out InstantPublisher.com - they did beat LuLu and I’ve been using them for a couple years now.