Tech Town, NC

Mooresville-based Lulu Press announced last week that they will now help authors publish their works in ebook form to be consumed by the most cutting edge literati among us. The new service, called “eBook Optimization,” allows formatting of a high quality PDF to be read on either an iPhone or the much less heralded Sony eBook Reader.

Previously the service was available only to large publishers, but the opening of the service to all is in line with founder Bob Young’s mission of allowing content creators of any stripe and expertise to publish their works and, potentially, to profit from them. The cost of the optimization service is $25 per item, which is a heck of a lot cheaper than running your own printing press and is a pretty low barrier to entry into the ebook market. Those who publish their works as ebooks are free to charge whatever price they see fit for the right to squint into an iPhone and read it.

It’s well known that ebooks have failed to take off despite the presence of fairly able technology, but a slew of new readers featuring e-Ink will be debuting this year in the hopes of changing all that. Many analysts are predicting (or just hoping) that e-Ink is the killer app for eBooks, as it will improve the reading experience immensely, drawing it nearly even with actual printed text. Will the combination of e-Ink, iPhones, and self-publishing finally push eBooks into the mainstream and leave us with sad, empty bookshelves? Only time will tell, but Lulu is well positioned if it does.

*Appendix - for more on eBook readers check out this excellent summary by Paul biba at TeleRead .