First off, I did take advantage of Lulu‘s free offer a couple years ago for NaNoWriMo winners. I got a copy of my NaNo novel printed up for free, and I was very pleased with the results.

• The book comes back to you EXACTLY as you sent it out. So, if there’s a little mistake in the cover art, it’ll be there on the book too. This is also a good thing in that you can get exactly the book you want.
• You do the cover art. Lulu has some stock covers to choose from, but you’ll probably want something unique. If you’re not artistic (like me!), then you’ll definitely want to enlist some help in this department.
• You do the layout work, based on Lulu’s guidelines. Based on the size book you’ve chosen, you’ll have layout guidelines to follow. It can be a bit tedious, but it’s not difficult. I think it took me and my husband several hours of tweaking to get this just right.
• It’s free!! Can’t beat that price, can you? Set up and listing is free. I believe they’ll even host your e-book for free. Then, for each book you sell, Lulu takes a cut and you get the rest. I won’t go into the fee structure here, but it’s not unreasonable.
• You can pay about $100 and also get an ISBN, which allows you to get listed on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. That one’s a no-brainer, in my opinion.

I know there are other sites that offer more help, but they also charge fees. Since I haven’t used any of them, I can’t speak for the quality or whether the fees are worth it. Anyone?