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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Welcome everyone. We will get started in just a moment. I want to give a minute for everyone to filter in.

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but if you can see and hear me. Go ahead and drop your name and location in the chat.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: See Vancouver, Arkansas. Hi, Linda. Elena from Michigan, Rhode Island. Washington, Illinois, England. Idaho!

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Welcome, welcome! I see a lot of returning names which is great. We love having you back throughout the week.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: and if you're new here, if this is your first time. Welcome. I'm Michele with pro writing aid, and we're so happy to have you here at romance writers week especially on Valentine's day. How fun

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: it looks like everything is working on my end. So I'm going to jump into our welcome slides here, and then we will get started.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: So your replays for Monday and Tuesday are already up on the romance writers. Week. Hub, I'm going to drop some links in the chat for you now, in case you're unfamiliar with the hub. That is where you will go for Monday. Through Thursday's replays, slides, audio transcripts any special links from our speakers. The schedule. Everything is there for you, including a downloadable participant guide. So you wanna make sure that you check that out this week?

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We will get the replays up as soon as possible. There is a little bit of downtime for processing between Zoom and Youtube, but we try to get them up as quickly as we can, so

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: You can head there for all of that information. Those will be up until March first, and then

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: we will have the replays for premium and premium pro rating aid subscribers. After that.

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We do have a premium day this week on Friday. So

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: if you are a premium or premium pro user of pro writing 8. Already you already have access to that premium day, and those directions will come to your email on Friday morning. If you are not a premium or premium pro subscriber, yet we do have a special offer for all attendees this week to upgrade to a yearly premium or premium pro

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: subscription at 25% off that discount is available until March first. But if you would like to upgrade by Friday morning, you can join us, live on Friday for premium day and review. The premium. Day replays as well, so that discount link is on the Hub page until march first, so you can check it out there.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: And if you'd like to keep talking romance writing, we do have our community that we would love to have you join? You can go to this link here, and also there is a link on the Hub page that will take you to our community. You can log in with your pro writing a account information and join us there in the live event. Chat to see all the discussions taking place right now during Romance Week, there's a lot of great discussion and romance authors and

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: fellow attendees there. So we'd love to have you there. Reminders for this session. If you have questions, please put them in the QA. Box, so that we can keep track of those. As you can see, the chat moves very quickly, and we don't want to miss any of the questions. So if you would like to chat with your fellow attendees today, please do so. You wanna make sure you select everyone in the dropdown menu so that your messages go to the whole chat and not just to

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the host and panelists, which is the default, so make sure you are selecting everyone, and then you can chat away.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: So once again, thank you for joining us. I'm so excited to introduce our speaker to day. Chelsea Bennett is the education and community manager for lulu.com, and host of Lulu's Youtube Series, Lulu University, as well as their monthly Webinar series.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Her areas of expertise include self publishing print on demand technology building, an author brand direct sales and marketing when not thinking about publishing Chelsea can be found playing Disco for their husband, or having in depth conversations about the universe with her cat. Batman!

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Welcome, Chelsea! We're so glad to have you here?

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Oh, hi! Thank you for having me.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: I'm going to just slip into the background, and I will be back for QA.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright. Thank you so much, Michelle. I appreciate that. So hello, everyone. And happy Valentine's day to all of you Valentine's Day in romance Writers week just seems like a very significant seems like a milestone in my life to be speaking at romance writers. Week on Valentine's day, during the lunch break which all of you have chosen to spend your time here. Well, I'm in North Carolina, so my lunch break.

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Chelsea Bennett: Maybe some of you are are doing something different. But thank you so much for for your time and for choosing to spend it with me today. I wanted to start. I was testing this out with Michelle before this session, and I was pretty pleased with the results, so I thought I would try it with you all. So before I jump into my my session. I'm gonna do a little. I don't wanna call an icebreaker because you you all are already so chatty. But

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Chelsea Bennett: okay, so I know that not all romance writers right, erotica. I know that. But let's go on an experiment here. So say that you are writing erotica, and you need a new PIN name.

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Chelsea Bennett: Your PIN name has to be the last thing that you ate, plus the street that you grew up on

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Chelsea Bennett: so mine.

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Chelsea Bennett: I just ate some yogurt and berries. But Yogurt is a terrible name for Erotica, so I'm gonna go with Barry Maine. I grew up on Main Street so my erotica PIN name would be Barry Maine. Michelle hopefully. Doesn't mind me sharing. I played this with her, and she just had a protein shake, and she grew up on a street called Francis, so she's either protein Francis, which would really get her in that fitness niche.

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Chelsea Bennett: or shake Francis, which I think is a little bit more titillating. Alright, I see the chat lighting. Let's see.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright. Let's see. Oh, man, you guys are really really fast hot. Mohawk is an amazing name. So Laura some of it broth, Briarwood.

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Chelsea Bennett: chicken boy, are very good. Pizza, California smoothie, 1, 4, 4, maybe another fitness erotica influence Cajun sausage flower. II don't know if I can get all I do have a presentation to get to. Alright. I'm just gonna scroll through a little bit. Let's see military banana.

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Chelsea Bennett: Very good coffee. Lily's good cereal. True. Scott. Okay, chocolate kings love that granola cream.

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Chelsea Bennett: There's something there. There's something there. All right. Let's do some cafe, Lexington. That's I feel like very sexy for some reason. Alright. And one more noodle lion. Okay, egg Sharewood village. Alright. I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna stop. Egg. Queen is very good, too. Alright, thank you for playing. Thank you for playing. That was super fun.

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Chelsea Bennett: Raspberry drive. Okay? So I'm very main. And Diane is raspberry drive. I feel like.

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Chelsea Bennett: let's Collab. Let's link after this. Okay, alright, thank you for playing. I did think that was fun. I also I had to stop. I told Michelle I was getting some water when we played it, but really I would just laugh so hard to kind of smudge my mascara. So that may be the case. Now I'm gonna roll with it. So we're gonna go. I'm going to start sharing my screen. Thank you again for playing, and let's make sure that I have my presentation

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and app.

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Chelsea Bennett: and we will go. So bear with me just a second, because I lost it in everything that we were just doing. So talk amongst yourselves. Please continue doing your very fun and very exciting names, and I will be with you in just a minute. All right.

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Chelsea Bennett: Here we go.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright. I'll have to know now, if I start with an icebreaker to be more prepared for really amazing. Responses. Okay, sharing the screen. Got it going. We're gonna share now, alright. So

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Chelsea Bennett: my presentation is up right now. I will not be looking at the chat. But hey, if you have more erotica names, please feel free to add them. So again. Hello, and good morning. Good afternoon. Good night. Wherever you're hailing from. Thank you very much for joining me today. This session is about Lulu. I want to talk to you about how to grow your brand and your bank account with direct sales.

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Chelsea Bennett: and let's get into it. Alright. So if you are not familiar with Lulu, here's a little bit about us to get started. So Lulu is a real word. I like to remind people of that. It's not just a leggings company or a fun Mount Sound. It means remarkable person, object or idea. We've been around since 2,002. So I've been here in this space for quite a while, and happy to to say that we've we've lasted, and we're still here and still innovating, our publishing platform is free to use.

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Chelsea Bennett: We have printed over 53 million books that is so many books. It's hard for me to wrap my hand around. But even more staggering is the 143 million dollars that we have paid out and author revenue, or the authors have earned with our platform. So very exciting to share that. And I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about how you can get in on that when you work with Lulu. And last, but not least, is our mission is that we are dedicated to making the world a better place.

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Chelsea Bennett: one book at a time, through sustainable practices, innovative print-on-demand products, and a commitment to excellent service.

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Chelsea Bennett: The last thing I want to share with a little bit about us is that we are a bee core.

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Chelsea Bennett: If you're not familiar. The B court community is a wonderful just assortment of brands and companies who have decided to take an extra step and be certified by the nonprofit vlab to meet standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency. So if you are, if you're last minute gift shopping and see if you can find a Valentine's Day gift or any gift that you have to give. The B. Corp. Community is a great place to look

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Chelsea Bennett: alright. So, as Michelle said, I am Chelsea Bennett. That is my cat batman. He will not be appearing today. He doesn't work on Valentine's Day or any other day, so it is very hard to get him on the calendar, but that is me, and that is him.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright. So I'm here to talk to you today about direct sales and what that can mean for your author business.

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Chelsea Bennett: so especially your burgeoning, erotic author. Business, as we all just establish all right. But what is direct to consumers so direct to consumer is when a brand sells their product directly to the customer, bypassing third party retailers, wholesalers, or other middlemen. So if you are familiar with self-publishing, if you're a self-published author, or even if you are just selling any crafts or anything online.

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Chelsea Bennett: directly to your audience, you know what this is. So for self publishing specifically, that is, cutting out the distributor. You are selling your books directly to your readers, and I'm gonna talk about why, that is so valuable as we go on actually, right now, I'm gonna talk about it. So why should an author use direct sales?

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Chelsea Bennett: So the benefits include more control over your brand. So when you think about selling through a third party, and II also wanna say, kinda before we really get into it, that I don't want you to. Take in this information, and at the end of it think this has to be an either or so. I'm either selling direct or I'm selling through a distributor.

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Chelsea Bennett: it can be both. So whatever you are doing right now to support your author business to get your books out there. If it's working. Keep doing it. But I challenge you. I encourage you to think of a way to incorporate direct sales so that you can reap the benefits. So more brand control. Obviously, if you're selling on your own website.

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Chelsea Bennett: you're not having to worry about, you know. I'll pick on Amazon. I know there's a little guy, but I'll pick on them now. So you know, when you buy something from Amazon, it'll say other people have bought, or you may be interested in, or something like that. So when you're selling on your own website, you can recommend your own content. You can recommend your own books. I see you're buying this one. You may like another one in the series, things like that. So you have more control over the customer journey and your brand, and you're able to keep that in the forefront.

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Chelsea Bennett: You can also earn more revenue when you use direct sales, so by cutting out the middleman or the distributor, you are able to keep what would be going to them of your revenue. You can also get a faster payout. So on some of the options that are available to you with direct sales, you can get paid within 24, or 48 h, increase that cash, flow into your business, and then reinvest in whatever projects or initiatives you have going to support your business

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Chelsea Bennett: transparency around sustainability. So I talked about Lulu being a B Corp. If you choose to use Lulu for your direct sales. Then you're also able to take advantage of our B corpiness. So you know that you're working with a print partner. That's doing everything we can to support the planet to make sure that we're are meeting those standards that the B Corp community has set. And so if you do choose to use fulfillment, and production from Lulu, then you can incorporate those benefits as well, and share that with your audience.

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Chelsea Bennett: You also own the customer data which can allow you to market smarter. If you have not thought about customer data or reader data and what that might mean to you.

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Chelsea Bennett: Here's your sign to start doing that. So when I say customer data, what I mean is those email addresses, you can get geographic locations. You can build out your email list, connect, get the names of your readers, and really start building those long term relationships, you know. Again, if you sell through a third party retailer Amazon, even the Lulu bookstore. You'll see that the sales are coming through. And obviously that's wonderful. But what you're not seeing is who actually bought your book

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Chelsea Bennett: so direct sales. Allow you to have that extra layer of information about your sales, about your customers which will allow you to really fine tune your marketing strategy and market smarter.

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Chelsea Bennett: You can also take advantage of white label solutions with direct sales. So if you use direct, and there are other ways you can do this as well, but with Lulu direct you can upload your own branding, so the invoice that comes in the shipment of your books is going to have your publishing in print or your branding on it. Again, you know. So Michelle starts that erotica for fitness influencers line, and it says Protein Francis on the invoice rather

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Chelsea Bennett: than Lulu. So you have some again, brand continuity control of the brand there, and you can also play the long game. So obviously, I talked about growing your email list. Learning about your readers. All of this helps you build a platform that is more sustainable, identify your super fans identify the people who may be willing to come along with you on a subscription journey that you may take or really are interested in your content can become. Your Beta readers can become the people who are

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Chelsea Bennett: basically promoting your books to your audience. So all of these things can be available to you with direct sales.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright. So I'll just note also that I this presentation. I updated it for Valentine's day, so I'll also I always try to incorporate animals in my presentations today they're Valentine's theme. So there's really no deeper meaning than that this this dog just fit the bill alright. So how can you incorporate direct sales? There are several different ways to do this. The first and kind of easiest. I would say it would be in person events.

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Chelsea Bennett: So if you go to an event, if you go to a book fair, or any other event where your books may be relevant, or where it would make sense to sell them, get a box of books, sell them there, you can have, as basic as a clipboard with a sign up for email addresses. That is basically the most rudimentary version of direct sales is just selling your book directly to your readers, and you can absolutely do that in person events, I would also say.

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Chelsea Bennett: just as an author you should always have a box of books in your car or at your house or somewhere, so you can have them. If that opportunity does arise. But again, this is maybe just getting a square for payment you can plug into your phone or take cash or whatever getting those email addresses. That is kind of your first intro into direct sales.

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Chelsea Bennett: You can also hand fulfill online orders. So if you kind of listen to what I have to talk about today, and you're not really ready to integrate or to do any of these, maybe things that maybe seem a little bit more labor intensive, or that will take more time

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Chelsea Bennett: having your website set up having way for people to buy your books. This is also a kind of a a good entry level way to sell direct. Have the the sales page on your website. Orders come through. You get them. You take a day out of your week every week to processes, orders, and take them to your mailbox, or ship them, or however and this is another way to do it again. You're still reaping all the benefits you're getting people to your website. You may or may not be familiar with the term that's been floating around for a while. This owned versus rented land.

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Chelsea Bennett: This is very much in line with direct sales. So if you're selling for your own website. That's your real estate on the Internet. You're not worried about algorithms or what social media is doing or Amazon, you know, promoting certain books over others, or whatever you have your own website, you have your own corner carved out where people can come, find you. They can interact with you, they can get all of your content, regardless of what's happening outside on the Internet.

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Chelsea Bennett: So this is hand fulfilling orders on your website, or just having your own website to sell books through is a great way to be able to do that and kind of protect against those changing algorithms and all the other things that the Internet does.

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Chelsea Bennett: And then, last, but not least, you can integrate with Lulu direct, or our print Api, these are all free, all of our apps are free to use. But with Lulu direct, and we'll talk about this. We integrate with woocommerce and shopify our print. Api can work with any website. But you will need maybe a developer. Or if you have access to the back end of your website, then our Api is a great option there.

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Chelsea Bennett: So why would you want to do this? I did talk about the benefits I'm going to kind of go over these several times in this presentation, so that you'll understand how valuable this is. But you can retain more revenue per sale again cutting out the distributors, so there's more left over for you

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Chelsea Bennett: get paid quickly within 24 to 48 h, collect customer data, keep your brand front and center and then automation. So automation is such a wonderful opportunity for you to take advantage of here when you are integrated with direct sales, with bluu or a print. Api readers come to your website to buy your book. That order gets transmitted to us to print and fulfill. And then we ship out those books. Wherever your readers are all around the world.

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Chelsea Bennett: we have a global print network. So by tapping into Lulu direct or our print Api, you have access to that as well. So you never have to worry about inventory.

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Alright. So that is a little bit about why you should. But how can this grow your brand? What does all this really mean when it comes to growing your brand and growing your audience.

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Chelsea Bennett: So direct sales need direct connections. It's in the name you are having a one to one interaction with your readers, and not having to go through a third party, which again, won't give you all the information that you need to really invest in your readers and grow your audience and keep those conversations going. Keep that relationship going.

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Chelsea Bennett: So, as as I said next on this slide, it allows you to create relationships to share just transactions. So book sales are great. But you have to kind of look at the long game a little bit, and we're gonna talk about that later. But you have to kind of think, what can I do with this information? How can I use this to grow my email list to grow my social following to really understand more about my readers, to ask for their feedback. So once you're able to get that information and create those relationships, it can have such tremendous implications for you, for you and your author business

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Chelsea Bennett: owning the customer journey. So I talked about this a little bit. But essentially this just means what we, what we mean when we say customer journey is when someone lands on your website, the pathway that they go to buying your book.

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Chelsea Bennett: So maybe, and I'll have some examples later. But maybe you say you want people to land on your website, and you want them to immediately see your new book that's for sale, or you want them to immediately see your blog sign up, or your newsletter sign up, or how to follow your own social media. So you get to craft that when you are selling directly, you can create a whole experience for your readers and really pull them into your universe to your series, to your characters.

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Chelsea Bennett: You don't have those opportunities when you're selling through a third party. So it's a really, really wonderful thing that you can do and really get people involved in your I mean, then, not only your books, you can also share a little bit of behind the scenes, content whatever you want, right? This is your real estate.

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Chelsea Bennett: You can also collect customer data as I've talked about. We'll keep talking about that. But this can give you so many insights into who's buying your book? Why, I always like to kind of give an example of if you are running ads on Facebook, or maybe you do a podcast interview, or you do something on good reads. Or however, you want to spotlight your content. If your Cta is by my book. If people are going to your website to buy it, you're getting that data. And you're seeing. Okay. You know, this

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Chelsea Bennett: ad did really. Well, let's do it again. This one I changed. The graphic people didn't seem to love it. It didn't convert for me. So even getting those insights into how your ads and all of your promotional strategies are working, being able to track that through sales. And your website is very, very valuable.

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Chelsea Bennett: Build your email list, I think, probably hopefully, everyone knows how valuable the email list is. Email marketing has conversions that are hundreds, hundreds of percentages higher than like social media marketing and conversions.

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Chelsea Bennett: And when you think about it, it just makes sense like, think about your inbox. Your inbox is a very curated selection of information that you are electing to see you're not just going through everything on social media. It's not like scrolling through every post that could be on there. Whatever the algorithms think are trending your inbox is a little bit sacred. It's very I mean, it's it's sacred space, you know. When you look in there, you know that everything you're seeing is something you elected to see

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Chelsea Bennett: that's very highly curated content for you. So if you can get into your readers, inbox, the possibilities are pretty endless with how you can keep that relationship going and keep them engaged.

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Chelsea Bennett: As I mentioned, you keep your brand front and center, and obviously this is helpful with growing your brand, as if people start associating your brand and your color palette and your themes, and how everything the way that you're presenting your brand visually. It's so much easier to reinforce that when you are selling through your own website. So, as I said, you can suggest other books and products, you can do targeted remarketing. So if you see someone who bought, you know, one book in your series.

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Chelsea Bennett: they need the others. Obviously. So you can follow up with them and say, Hey, the next one's coming out, or you can. Here's the first chapter for free, and you can buy the others, or, Hey, you bought this book. Here's a promo code, so you can buy another one for a friend or things like that

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Chelsea Bennett: white label shipping that I talked about as well, going back to protein, Francis, you get the boxes, you get the books in the mail, the invoices protein, Francis, not Lulu press. That's pretty cool, and then last, but not least again, faster payout, so better cash flow for your business. So again, this can be used for whatever you're working on, you can reinvest it into your next book, into the next cover, into redesigning your back list into Facebook

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Chelsea Bennett: Facebook ads doing a sponsored post on podcasts or newsletters, or whatever. So, having access and being able to kind of count on that money being more readily available, sooner, can really have a tremendous implications for your marketing efforts, and how agile you can be with them.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright! II love this picture. This cat is the most cat on Valentine's day ever. That's exactly what a cat would look like if you tried to Valentine's Day. It, I guess. All right. So that's your brand. How do you grow your bank account with direct sales.

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Chelsea Bennett: I've talked about the the points, but let's let's hit them home now. No middle man. So more revenue per sale. Access your funds within 24 to 48 h email marketing again. This is, if you are not email marketing. If you're not looking into that, you're leaving money on the table. I mean like I said, the retargeting, the remarketing, the follow ups the newsletter, letting people know when you're doing promos, or just

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Chelsea Bennett: there's a a also. This is totally an aside. But there's a a website called National Day Calendar. And if you aren't subscribed to that, that can be a really fun. Well, for you to kind of run promos, or do plan emails or social post every day is celebrating something like the other one that always comes to mind for me is sneak a zucchini on your neighbor's porch day. That's a real thing. But maybe your romos

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Chelsea Bennett: novel. There's a cherry pie that comes into effect. It's the lead characters, a baker I don't know. So maybe on Cherry Pie Day you do a promo for that, or you just share and ask people to talk about their favorite recipes or something like that. That's relevant to your book. National Day Calendar. A holiday is any day where people act that kind of out of the norm. So you can use those to really boost your email marketing and your social

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Chelsea Bennett: and your social post. So thanks for coming to my Ted. Talk about national Day calendar. Alright. So no inventory management. This is huge. You don't have to in incur all these overhead costs to store your books or take up space in your house to store books, so you can have fulfill them when you use Lulu direct. All the orders are the print and fulfillment is automated. So you don't have to incur a ton of fees and think, okay, well, I have to order this many books to get the bulk price.

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Chelsea Bennett: and then I have to sell this many to really break. Even you can order one proof copy. Once that looks good, you're open and available to sale, and then you don't have to worry about any of that inventory

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Chelsea Bennett: print on demand. So Lulu is built on print on demand. All of our offers, all of our services and platforms, or products rather, are print on demand. So you never have to worry about inventory or guesstimating. If you sell one book a month. We love that, and we're we're happy to be a part of it. If you sell hundreds of books a month. That's wonderful, too, but there's no pressure there to hit any minimums or maximums to use these services, or

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Chelsea Bennett: just lulu.com in general. If you would like to try out our our print quality and just our process of publishing. Then you can go in, upload your project by one copy. See if I knew what I was talking about, and then choose your path from there

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Chelsea Bennett: subscription opportunities. So this is outside of Lulu. But I do want to mention this because I think when you are selling direct, and you are able to really understand your readers, and you start to kind of recognize the group that's always buying your content first, the people who are always engaging with your social media posts, the people who are signing up for your newsletter, or, you know, engaging with you in whatever ways you make available.

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Chelsea Bennett: These people can be your super fans. And what that means is that they want to buy anything that you create.

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Chelsea Bennett: And so by selling direct, you can more quickly identify who these people are, and you can decide on your own is a subscription. A good move for me. Would this be a good idea? Do I have enough backers to where the work that I would put into this makes sense? And again, this isn't really specifically what today's session is about. But I would mention we have a couple of videos on our Youtube channel about subscriptions for authors or finding your super fans, and really what that means is for you, as an author, to make a living from your writing.

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Chelsea Bennett: How many people do you need per month to support you. You know, if you need. You know people giving you $20 a month, or you need. You know, however, many people giving you $5 a month. So kind of doing that math to say, Okay, well, actually, I really only need a hundred people that are willing to pay me blank per month

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Chelsea Bennett: for me to make this a sustainable career. So figuring that out can be really helpful, and by selling direct you can kind of. See those patterns. See what's really resonating with your audience and also with your email marketing, you can just reach out to them and say, Hey, I'm think I know that you recently bought my book? I'm thinking of starting a subscription service. Would that be something that you're interested in? So again, direct sales? The implications of what you can do with the data that you find are really

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tremendous, and that's just one of them. That you can be thinking about or take advantage of.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright. So invest in the long game. So you know, obviously, if you are writing books, you know, this is a get rich, quick scheme. And it's just about building that author brand building your readership and continuing, you know, just showing up, you know, consistency doing the work.

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Chelsea Bennett: And so with direct sales. This can really be a great tool for you. Use as you have that eye towards the long game and sustainability. This image I would chose because it's a dachshund. So a long dog, long game, get it. Okay? So nurture your email list. So you're getting those email addresses. So stay in touch. I mean, this doesn't have to be anything overwhelming. There are a ton of email service providers that you can utilize and take advantage of to help you

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Chelsea Bennett: maintain and nurture your email list. But this is your channel to self flash sales. Tell people about promotions that you have. Tell people about your next book coming up. What projects you have. Send your author, Newsletter. Give them behind the scenes, looks, run contests, and giveaways and polls. So all of this is so valuable to have when you're building out an email list, you can also use your email list to do retargeting on your website.

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Chelsea Bennett: So as you get really familiar with your author website and the journey that you're taking your customers on being able to look at that data and figure out when people are dropping off, if there are abandoned carts. So maybe someone put your book in their shopping cart. But for whatever reason didn't get across the finish line to buy. Then you can email them and say, Hey, you know, I saw that you had this. Don't leave it behind your 10% off. So nurturing your email list can just provide a plethora of opportunities for you to connect with your readers and build those long term relationships.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright provide great customer service. So this is something that I don't feel like a lot of people talk about when they're kind of talking about writing or selling books. But if you're selling books through your own website, you're a business.

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Chelsea Bennett: You're you're a business. There's no way to say it, and every business has to have customer service, so, regardless of if you do every single thing right, every sale goes out with that. A hitch. Everyone's happy. There is going to be someone who emails you and says, Hey, I put in the wrong shipping address, or I need to order 2 copies instead of one? Or I'm moving. Can I change this, or can I hold off on this order, or when will my order?

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Chelsea Bennett: And these questions are going to come through so understanding the value of customer service, of making yourself available, of making your contact information, or the contact information of who whoever is running your customer service readily available. Your hours of communication. All of these things can help you create a wonderful brand that your readers are excited to interact with and loyal to. And I'll also say about customer service that you know. Think about yourself as a consumer.

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Chelsea Bennett: and oftentimes the worst when you're having a terrible experience with the brand. Not too long ago I had ordered something, and it came. The wrong thing came when I reached out to the brand. They were very apologetic, immediately wanted to fix it and take care of it.

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Chelsea Bennett: I will shop there again. I will be a customer of theirs again, because they handled that so well. So, even though I was disappointed that the order was wrong. That wasn't great, but their response to it turned it around for me. I was like, Okay, you know they understand they empathize. So you can do that as well with your author business. And if someone emails you and says, this isn't the right book, or it came damage. I don't know whatever could happen in the shipping things, or you know any any of the things that could come up from your customers.

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Chelsea Bennett: If you can handle it well and reach out with empathy, then you can really turn, maybe someone who's disgruntled into a lifelong, loyal customer and loyal reader.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright, you can also collect and review data. So this is very important when you are thinking about the long game, because it's one thing to just kind of spray. And pray, which is something we in marketing refer to is, you know, you're just putting stuff out on every email channel, every social media platform, and then just hoping it converts, and then just moving on and doing it again the next day or the next week. That's not a great way to do it. The way that you really want to do it is plan out your marketing calendar or your email

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Chelsea Bennett: emails. And again, this doesn't have to be super complicated. Maybe you post twice a week on your social media platform of choice. Maybe send out one email a week and then just putting time on your calendar every month to stop. Look at how those ads perform. Look at how those social posts perform. Look at your email, open rates, and how those are getting engaged with and see. Yes, this is working. Let's continue doing this or this isn't working. Let's try to switch it up.

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Chelsea Bennett: So collecting data. I've said that Ada in this short time have been together. But the second piece of that is you're viewing it. It means you can collect all the data in the world. It means nothing. If you're not sitting down to think. Okay, what are these numbers telling me? And how is my audience really appreciating and resonating with my work.

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Chelsea Bennett: And when you're reviewing that data, you want to use those analytics to drive marketing decisions. So you may love Facebook. You may think that Facebook is where all of your audience is. You may love spending time on that.

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Chelsea Bennett: but at the end of the day, when you kinda take time to review. You may see that your posts aren't getting much engagement, or you're not getting as many followers as you want, or when you're posting something. It's kind of going out into the void. Your ads aren't getting seen by the right audience. So then maybe you think, okay, let me really look at my target audience and see, have they shifted to a different platform, or are they in a group that I'm not in yet? Is there a way that I can kind of reach out to them. So using those analytics that you're collecting to make sure that you are

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Chelsea Bennett: investing in marketing in the smartest way possible and not just spinning your wheels.

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Chelsea Bennett: Another great thing you can do invest in the long game. This goes with email list. You can do this through social media. You could do this through a form on your website, but ask for feedback and listen to it. So this is very much like collecting and reviewing data except with humans instead of numbers. But ask your audience for feedback. Don't be afraid to ask them what they like about your website or if they were able to find your book easily. What is it? You know a. A cover, art or cover design

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Chelsea Bennett: are a great way to engage your audience. We always see authors that'll in their cover design phase. Put those online, ask for feedback from their target audience and see what they think so. That's a wonderful thing to do is ask for that feedback, but the caveat is, you have to listen to it. So you don't want a bunch of disgruntled readers who took their time to weigh in on whatever question you're posing, and then when the book comes out, they realize you didn't listen to them at all that can be a bit

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frustrating. So ask for feedback and listen to it.

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Chelsea Bennett: And last, but not least, subscribe to industry newsletters. So I work in publishing. So I have an inbox full of newsletters to kind of keep me up to date with what's going on in publishing what people are talking about their pain points what they're excited about, and I would recommend that you do the same. So for romance writers looking for romance things or romance newsletters or websites. You could subscribe to Facebook group

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Chelsea Bennett: groups, things like that. But even outside of that, I mean writers, groups. If there's a really specific niche that you're in trying to tap into that. But E, or even e-commerce things, you know, kind of outside of maybe your writing niche, but will help you with your business. So this is kind of a last pro tip that I would recommend. You don't have to read all them times I'll just kind of skim, but every now and again there's something in there that will be so valuable and kind of help. You have that leg up

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on some others in your space or some competition.

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Chelsea Bennett: All right. So I want to go over direct sales with Lulu very briefly.

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Chelsea Bennett: So you can sell your book through your own website. That is the name of the game. As I mentioned, you keep 100% of your profits. Actually, I don't think I mentioned that. I think, I said, you keep more revenue for sale. But at Lulu you're only paying for the print cost of the book, and the way that it works is you will set up a payment so you can put your card on file. As readers buy a book from you. They are charged. At the same time you are charged. So you pay Lulu. The customer pays you. So it's a seamless

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Chelsea Bennett: transaction. We never get any of your customer data that belongs to you. And you get to keep all of your profit

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Chelsea Bennett: click customer data. I've talked about it, automate print and fulfillment. So again, we have the global print network. So we can get your books wherever your readers are. If you tap into Lulu direct, or our print Api, or even if you wanted to kind of start small and sell through the Lulu bookstore, we have a global print network, and we can get your book to where your readers are all over the world. We have white label dropshipping. I mentioned that

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Chelsea Bennett: protein Francis. Just good measure. Get paid faster, and we integrate with shopify woocommerce for Wordpress and our print. Api and I can't give away too much right now. But I would say, if there is another platform you are looking for or interested in. Keep an eye on Lulu's social media, or sign up for our email list, because we will be announcing more integrations

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Chelsea Bennett: in the very near future.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright so for shopify and woocommerce, if you aren't familiar, or you kinda wanna simple rundown of how to think about these. You may want to consider shopify. If you want 24, 7, support, and things like hosting and security taken care of for you.

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Chelsea Bennett: If you want your website up and running as quickly as possible and have limited technical knowledge. And you want clean and stylish templates that are easy to use. Shopify is a great out of the box up and running resource for you. So if you are interested in, hey, let's just get this started. Let's get it going. Shopify is a good option to explore there.

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Chelsea Bennett: Woocommerce is great for personalization. So if you have a passion project where personalization is key, woocommerce is great for that, if you want to build a large online store with scalability, or if you are tech, savvy, and want greater control of your sites, design and function woocommerce works really well with wordpress. So if you have, if you already have a wordpress site, woocommerce is a good option there. But also, if you just want endless customization and plugin

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Chelsea Bennett: and options for you. Woocommerce has a ton. So that is a quick rundown. And again, if you look at our Youtube channel, we've got some more in-depth breakdowns of those 2.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright, let's move on to Lulu users in the wild. So if anyone has seen me present for present before. I always like to include this. I think it's important to show you what this looks like, but usually my slide has Tiger King on it. Because I think that's funny. But I again updated revamped for romance writers week. And who else could I have chosen but the one, the only

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Chelsea Bennett: loincloth? Fabio. So let's see what it looks like when you actually use Lulu direct in real life.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright. So this author is named Phoebe Garnsworthy. She does a lot of affirmations, meditations, lifestyle kind of content, all of that good stuff. But I love her website. I think it is very calming. So I like to look at it. But you know it's so in line with exactly the kind of content that she creates. And you can do this for any genre or any world that you built anything that you're writing in.

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Chelsea Bennett: You can pull people into your world immediately when they land on your home page. This isn't something that you can do when you're selling through a third party. This is a highly curated experience. Phoebe nails it because right when you land on her page, you feel this sense of calm. I think this picture is very relaxing, so she's got all of her. Her branding is upfront. And you're completely in the world that she's created for you.

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Chelsea Bennett: I also want to call out. I mentioned several times email marketing, how important that is. So right above the fold, which means right above kind of the halfway point of your home page.

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Chelsea Bennett: Phoebe has her email list. So she's got. She's asking for your email right right off the bat. So you don't have to sell things to collect email addresses. It's a good way to do it, because when you're doing this transactions. You do need those confirmation emails. But if someone is just visiting your website for the first time, just interested in, you wants to learn more offering something for free like, hey, here's the first chapter of my book. Here's an ebook for you. Here's a newsletter.

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Chelsea Bennett: It's good to offer something. If you're asking for email addresses. So you can see Phoebe is offering a free meditation for your email address. So again, she's serving up the content that she knows that you're there for, and giving you a way to connect with her, build that relationship outside of the time you spend on her website or with her books.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright. If you scroll down her site, she has her books available right here. So what I love about this is it looks very similar kind of how she has it on the bottom to buying through any kind of third party marketplace, cause you're gonna see the book that you want. But you're also seeing other books that are usually kind of the algorithm will serve up similar books by different authors.

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Chelsea Bennett: When you're selling on your own website, you are all the other authors. You are the only author, so you can say, Hey, daily rituals is the book she wants to highlight here. But here all my other books in case you want to explore these as well, and then she's got different options for you, paperback ebook. But I love this. I think it's such a good example of using your real estate online to really highlight what you want and really help your readers

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Chelsea Bennett: alright. Next is Kelly Oliver. So this is an award-winning mystery novelist. I love her little byline philosophy, professor and loyal servant do through cats, mischief, mayhem and flan. I feel like Flann got the short end to the stick there. But whatever so Kelly Oliver writes, mystery novels, as you can see at her home page, you're seeing all of the books, her her series that she wants you to to highlight.

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Chelsea Bennett: or that she wants to highlight. She has join my newsletter up there as well. She's got all of our social icons at the top. So she's making it really easy for you to find and connect with her, and again serving up the content that she wants you to see right above the fold when you land on her webpage.

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Chelsea Bennett: Here is what her sale page looks like, and I wanted to call this out, because, as I mentioned in the beginning.

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Chelsea Bennett: direct sales is not an either, or we live in a fantastic world today for entrepreneurs, for content, creators for authors, and you can pick and choose whatever tools work for you. So direct sales

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Chelsea Bennett: can slide into whatever else you have going on. So you can see Kelly Oliver here. She's got her book. She's got her description. And then she has all the places that you can buy it, so she's not exclusively selling it direct, but she's got a get a discount at shopify. So she's selling through Lulu direct using shopify. And that is another way that you can entice her readers to buy directly from you. So if you think well.

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Chelsea Bennett: my readers are really you know, trained to appreciate or want 2 day shipping, or next day delivery or shopping on Amazon, or whatever it is.

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Chelsea Bennett: There are ways that you can talk to your audience that I think, will really encourage them to buy directly from you. I mean, you can say, Hey, I'm building my brand. I am able to earn more per sale. If you buy directly through me, you're able to support me and my next book, if you buy directly you can connect with me. So there are a lot of ways that you can position this to make it more appealing to your readers to buy directly from you rather than going to a third party.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright, last, but not least, I think this is my last. My last example here. But last, but not least, the personal Astrological Almanac. This is from honeycom collective. I love this group, this company. They use our print. Api. I wanted to include this in here, because if you do choose to use Lulu's print, Api, customization is really endless. So what they do is there's a form that you fill out when you want to buy your personal Astrological Almanac. So what they need to create this specifically for you is your date of birth.

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And I think the time that you were born and some other information there, you put that into a form, and they make you your custom planner. So it's gonna have all of the alignment of the stars when you were born, and what that means to you throughout the year. And that trajectory.

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Chelsea Bennett: But that's a really cool and amazing customization. But even for a fiction author, the way you could do this is, hey? Do you want your name in the book? You want a personalized message at the beginning of the book, and tell me your name, and you can do that. And you can change every single book for each reader that's coming to your website. And I think that's, you know not always doesn't make sense in every circumstance. Obviously this one does. But I just wanted to share that. So you can kind of think about creative

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ways to incorporate direct sales, and and really in excite your readers to engage with you in that way, in that one to one relationship and that direct relationship that we're talking about.

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Chelsea Bennett: Okay, so how do you start selling direct?

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Chelsea Bennett: So first, you want to select your platform. You know, what is your website built on. Would you like to use shopify? Would you like to use woocommerce? Is there something else out there? So, selecting your platform and figuring out what you want to use for your website, then create an account on the e-commerce platform and lulu.com. So with Lulu, this will all be in your dashboard shopify right now is in your shopify account, but we are moving that over soon.

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Chelsea Bennett: So if you have a woocommer or a wordpress and woocommerce system already set up. You just put your URL into your Lulu dashboard and your accounts connect seamlessly so you can see your sales there.

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Chelsea Bennett: Then you wanna upload your project. So if you're not familiar with publishing on Lulu, it's free to publish on Lulu. You only pay when you want to buy print copies of your book, so you'll just need 2 Pdf files, one for your cover design and one for your interior file, or you can create a a cover on our site. You'll upload those, go through our prompts and then publish again. Print on demand. So order one proof copy, see what you think, and then you can make a decision from there.

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Chelsea Bennett: You wanna map your shipping options. This is pretty standard for any e-commerce sales thing. So this is no different. But you'll just decide if you wanna match our shipping@louis.com, or if you want to, maybe say, if if a reader buys 2 books, and they get free shipping, or maybe shipping is free with any purchase. However, you wanna do it.

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Chelsea Bennett: then you'll complete into end testing. If you're not familiar with what this is. This just means that you go through the whole process of landing on your website to buying a book to getting it into the mail or receiving it as if you were a customer. So this is a great process, I mean, regardless if you're selling direct or not, if you're kind of at the stage where you're just setting up your author website. Go through it and and ask others to do it, too, because you may think you know you're in it all the time, so it can be hard to kind of

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Chelsea Bennett: navigated, or or maybe see the points of friction that other people might have. So go through it. See what you can find out, then invite friends and family to go through it. Say, is it easy to find my sale page. Is it easy to add a book to the cart? Were you able to find my contact information? It was my FAQ. Page readily available. So inviting people to go through your website and just making it as easy as possible for people to land on your website and get to that transaction, or that checkout phase.

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Chelsea Bennett: Then, once all that is in place, go, live and tell the world that you did a thing, invite them to come, buy your book from your website, send it out your newsletter, share it on social media. Invite everyone to to see what you've done.

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Chelsea Bennett: Alright. So, coming to the end of it now, and I am just about to open up for questions. But here are some free resources for you. Obviously, if you want to learn more about Lulu. You can head to lulu.com and explore our website. Lulu University. So as Michelle mentioned, I host our Lulu University series. So if this past 45 min has been excruciating to you, go to our blog. We also have a blog. So you can check out our videos on on Youtube

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Chelsea Bennett: at Lulu University, you can go to our blog direct to consumer. Bookselling is a great article we put out and then follow us on social media@lulu.com.

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Chelsea Bennett: And specifically for romance writers, we have code romance 15 for 15% off print orders at Lulu. So if your book is ready, if you wanna try you know, test out our print quality, you can use that to do so. You can also just go in our bookstore and purchase a book that may look nice to you. Also, if you just wanna kinda play around with the whole system, we have free interior file templates for notebooks. We have like blank lined and dot grid available

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Chelsea Bennett: dot and grid available. So you can download that 100 page notebook. Publish it, you know. Upload it on our, on our publishing platform, and then just order a copy of a notebook that you made yourself, and see what you think. So that code is available. I know it's also in the hub as well.

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Chelsea Bennett: And that'll do it for for me, so I will open it up for questions again. I am Chelsea Bennett, known in some circles as Barry Main. Thank you so much for your time. Email me if I can't get to your questions. But I'll try now. So thanks everybody. Thank you so much. That was great. We do have about 15 questions

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: in the QA. Now, if you have any other questions, please get them in, and we will try to get through as many as we can. So first, an anonymous attendee asks with Lulu, do authors get approved of their book before publication.

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Chelsea Bennett: If you buy one, you do so. I would also recommend a great tool on Lulu is our book pricing calculator. So if you go to lulu.com, I'll actually pull it up now. But if you go to lulu.com, you can see pricing is in the top. Tab.

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Chelsea Bennett: Check out our pricing calculator, and you can put in the specifications of your book. So the trim size, the page, count the binding type that you want, the interior color all these things, and you can see what your per unit cost will be. So I shared that code romance 15 will give you 15% off of your print projects or your print purchases at Lulu. And that's a great way to to try out a proof copy and see what you think.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: And another another anonymous attendee asks, Can you publish things like guided journals via Lulu.

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Chelsea Bennett: Yes, you can, and we love low and no content. I know that Amazon will will ging authors at times or content creators for trying to sell and publish that we do not. So you can absolutely do guided journals. We love to see that that kind of content on Lulu, and we also do coil bound binding. I didn't get into our binding types. We also we offer coil bound and that can be a wonderful product set for a guided journal.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Laura asks, what about sales tax? Especially in the US. With all 50 States. It seems like it would be challenging

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Chelsea Bennett: sales tax. If you're selling through lulu.com, you don't worry about sales tax. We handle all that. If you are using shopify or woocommerce. They have plugins available to help you manage the sales tax when you're doing international sales or across the country. So I would recommend checking those out. We did a blog post on how to handle taxes with direct sales. If you just go to our blog, blog.lulu.com, then you'll you can read some information we put out on that as well. That might be helpful.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Leslie asks, are you doing anything to lower shipping costs for direct to consumer, especially those outside of the US.

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Chelsea Bennett: Yes. So we have a a global print network. So we have the Us. Canada, Australia, France, the Uk, and maybe 2 or 3 others that are in network as well. But essentially, when your reader buys a book from you, if you are using Lulu, it will route through the printer closest to the shipping destination. So even if you're buying author copies, it'll route to the printer closest to you or the shipping destination.

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and that helps us cut down on shipping costs and transit times as well. So hopefully. That will be advantageous for you.

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We have an anonymous question, how much are author-proof copies?

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Chelsea Bennett: How much are? Oh, I'm sorry. So that'll depend on your book. So I would just recommend again I dropped in the Webinar chat. Lulu.com slash pricing. If you go into that tab you'll be able to put in everything about your book that you're creating. So 250 pages 6 by 9 perfect paperback, and then it'll spit out your per unit cost. You can also see bulk, discounts and shipping rates as well.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Mary asks as a reader receiving constant emails from authors. I subscribed with annoys me so much that I'm sending them directly to spam. How can I use email lists more efficiently?

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Chelsea Bennett: That's a great point. And what you'll wanna do is note, why are you annoyed by that? Is it because the content is bad? Is it because the emails are too frequent? Is it because it's not relevant to you? Is it because you don't want to be in touch with that author in that way. So what you're going through right now is a perfect training ground for you to learn what not to do, and also what you like. And I would recommend this as you're looking at. I mean, obviously even covers for your book, your webinar

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Chelsea Bennett: website, design your customer journey, your emails. Look at the emails that you get, that you're regularly excited to get.

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Chelsea Bennett: Why, why do you love them? Is it catchy subject lines. Is it funny gifts? Is it just good insight? Is the person really good at? Right? Whatever it is? Look at that. Keep a list of that. And look at, really, think about what really turns you off from these email lists you're on now and make sure you're not doing those things. So what you're doing now is actually great training for you to make something that's really wonderful, and that won't end up in this fan folders of your readers.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Laura asks, does Lulu do unique covers where the cover is embossed gold, etc. And can you put in bookmarks, stickers, and other extra bits?

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Chelsea Bennett: So we do linen wrap with foil stamping. I think it's only on this fine right now, but if you go to lulu.com slash products, you can see all of our linen wrap and cover and all that's available. As far as putting stuff in the package. We don't do that now. So, but I love that idea, and you can do that with direct sales. And so my recommendation would be buying your books in bulk and then hand fulfilling them. I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing

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Chelsea Bennett: doing that. And I think it does allow for a lot of really fun extras that you can do for your readers like bookmarks, stickers, signed editions, things like that, so we can't fulfill that for you, or facilitate that for you. But you can absolutely order books in bulk and then do that on your own.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Just wanna share. We have some really great feedback in the chat. Lucy says this presentation is taking me from 0 interest in direct sales to thinking it might be doable. And Michael says this has been my surprise. I could do that of the week. So that's huge. Well.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: marjorie asks, when a customer orders a book from you who is charged for the shipping. Is it split between the customer and the author. For example.

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Chelsea Bennett: when someone orders a book from when you say you, I'm guessing like you as an author. So if you're selling your books through Lulu direct through your own website. You can charge whatever you want for shipping. A lot of people will just map to the shipping that Lulu charges, and you just kinda mirror those prices. But you can decide if you wanna pass that on to the customer. You can do that if you want to incur those shipping charges, and again say, in every purchase gets free shipping.

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Chelsea Bennett: or if you buy 5 books you can ship them for free or something like that then you can do that as well. But the shipping we have a lot of resources on how to set up shipping, but ultimately it's completely up to you and what you what your readers expect, what they're willing to pay for and what kind of cost you wanna pass on to them?

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Mary asks, is Lulu specific to any genres, or is any genre welcome?

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Chelsea Bennett: All genres are welcome. Yes, we love all genres. I like to tell people, whatever your hobby interest. Niche genre is. Someone has probably written a book about it on Lulu and we would love to have you.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Marjorie asks, can an author be with Lulu and other distributors like Amazon draft to digital, etc.

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Chelsea Bennett: Yes. So today's talk is about direct sales, which hopefully, was clear at this point. But we also distribute through Amazon, Ingram, and Barnes and Noble. So you can do that through through Lulu, or you can also upload your content through those channels and use Lulu as well. Depending on who I'm talking to you, I like to say at Lulu. We don't mind being, you know, the second fiddle or the side chick, if

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Chelsea Bennett: you will. We don't mind, you know, being in the shadows. It's about you, not us. So whatever works for you, I mean, as I mentioned, we live in a wonderful time to build the platform, have the tools and resources that work for you. So maybe you're selling on Amazon. Maybe you're selling your paperbacks on Amazon. You wanna sell hard covers on Lulu. You wanna do a coil bound workbook on Lulu to accompany your other distro channels

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Chelsea Bennett: that works, and of course, selling direct can accompany any distribution plans that you have or system that you have.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: We have an anonymous question, does a service like this allow for an author to remain completely anonymous, using only their pen? Name?

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Chelsea Bennett: Yes. Protein, Francis, did you write that? Yes, so you can't. I mean, if you want to use your PIN name, you're more than welcome. If you're using Lulu direct your website. However, you present yourself. However, you want to do that is, you are interacting with the customer. Lulu is not. We're just printing and fulfilling the book. So we're not gonna out. You know you can put whatever you want

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on your packing slip and use your PIN name, and I think that there's no issue with keeping your anonymity. There

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: we have another question, how is Lulu different from Ingram Spark?

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Chelsea Bennett: Well. the biggest thing is direct sales. So we have a really true mechanism for you to own your customer data and own your content and earn more revenue per sale. And we're really, really heavily invested in that. And continuing to offer resources around that.

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Chelsea Bennett: We also don't have any upload or revision fees, or any of that. So I believe that Ingram did away with one of those they may still have another. I'm not sure. But yeah, we don't charge any fees. Lulu's platform is free to use. You. Only buy. Are you only paying when you wanna buy print copies of your book?

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Chelsea Bennett: So I think that's a a very stellar standout point. I also think our direct sales solutions. And you know, being on the inside of Lulu, we live and breathe direct sales. We're so invested in in doing this for our authors and giving them more control over their the business side of books. So definitely that. And then also because I love this planet, we're a B-corp. So I also. I always like to to underline that as well.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: And another anonymous question, does this make sense for those on Wix?

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Chelsea Bennett: Thank you. Anonymous question. And I will say again, sign up for our email list or keep an eye on Lulu social media. I was just proofing a blog post. About some Wix and Lulu opportunities that are coming in the very near future.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Lisha asks, how do you estimate your page, count as pages vary so much? Does a dock. That's 8 by 8 and a half by 11. Work for novel sized pages, page for page.

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Chelsea Bennett: So the well, it really depends on how you're setting up your content. I mean, if you, we have templates available. So if you go to the book pricing calculator, you can say, you know, making 8 and a half by 11. You know it's got a hundred pages coil bound, and then, once we've given you the price of what your per unit cost will be. We also have cover templates that will will spit out for you, and interior file templates. You can use those to put copy and paste your content into to make sure everything is gonna

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Chelsea Bennett: upload without a hitch. The only thing to keep in mind there again is exporting as a Pdf. But we have templates available. So if you're worried about the pages lining up, I would just recommend using our templates.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Simon asks as you can use pen names. Can you associate multiple pen names with one particular payment card?

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Chelsea Bennett: I guess you could. I mean well, only when you set up your pay E information or your payment information, then you can split it as many ways as you want. So if your multiple PIN names have different bank accounts, you can split that revenue and have it sent to each. If you are set up through, shopify through woocommerce, you'll set that up on their end, and I don't know if they have any problems with that but I would just ask you to to look into that system.

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Chelsea Bennett: system, and whatever e-commerce platform you're going, for if you are selling direct they would be the ones that would. You would set up your payment information through but at Lulu, you know you can do that, and I don't see it being an issue. If you want to split that revenue, or or add that in.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: I think we have time for one more question. This is an anonymous one, do you, Bill? Another country's currency, for example, in Euros or Canadian currency? Or is it us, and then you charge conversion.

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Chelsea Bennett: Oh, that's a good question. And I'm honestly not sure of the answer to that. II we're in an international company. And so, whatever region you're in, that currency will be what you buy or sell, or trade in but II you know I don't. II do not believe we charge any currency conversions, because again, we have printers all over the world, so we're able to operate regionally across the globe. So I don't think that that is an issue. If you have any other

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Chelsea Bennett: questions about that, or any specifics, or to anyone who was not able to get their question answered. See, bennett@lulu.com is me she is I. So please don't hesitate to reach out. If you have any other questions, or if I can help you in any way.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Well, thank you so much for being here. This was such a great informative hour, and thank you to everybody who attended. Check out the links and we will have the replay and transcript up in the hub today, so you can watch everything again there. But thank you all, and we'll see you at our next session in about an hour

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Chelsea Bennett: bye, everybody happy. Valentine's day.