Lulu

Lulu is changing the world of publishing by empowering authors to publish their work themselves for free with complete editorial and copyright control. Lulu.com has truly become home to a new economy. Millions of registered users and two million site visitors each month as well as offices in Raleigh, London, Toronto and Bangalore, enable Lulu customers to reach the globe.

Lulu eliminates traditional barriers to publishing and enables authors to sell their work directly to their particular audience – no jumping through hoops to find a publisher who is likely to reject their work. Using Lulu’s simple publishing tools, they format and upload their digital content. Then they can take advantage of Lulu’s global marketplace, social networking and author services, free customized storefronts and retail listings on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and much more. Lulu’s lucrative 80/20-revenue split empowers authors to profit from their work.

As the creation of user-generated content increases, Lulu.com continues to be at the forefront of this rapidly growing curve. According to R.R. Bowker’s Books in Print database, some 276,489 books were published traditionally in the U.S. in 2008. Lulu alone published over 400,000 titles last year.

In 2008, Lulu acquired weRead, further enabling authors to expand their audience, encouraging true social discovery of books and bringing together traditional and independently published books in one marketplace. weRead is the largest, most popular social book discovery application on key social networks including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut and Hi5.

Lulu recently launched Lulu Poetry, which is targeted to poets who want to connect with their peers and have access to resources to receive reviews and feedback on their poetry as well as recognition, contest prizes and help to publish their work.

Lulu is guided by founder and CEO Bob Young – a true technology entrepreneur and open-source visionary with four successful multi-million dollar start up companies on his resume. In 1993, Young co-founded Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the open-source software company that gives hardware and software vendors a standard platform on which to certify their technology. Red Hat is a Fortune 500 company and chief rival to Microsoft. Young’s success at Red Hat won him industry accolades, including nomination as one of Business Week’s “Top Entrepreneurs” of 1999. In 2000, Young co-founded the Center for Public Domain, a non-profit foundation created to bolster conversation of intellectual property, patent and copyright law and the management of the public domain for the common good. Grant recipients have included the Free Software Foundation and the Future of Music Coalition. In 2003, Young purchased the Hamilton Tiger–Cats of the Canadian Football League and currently serves as the league’s vice chairman. He is also part of the ownership group of the Carolina RailHawks professional soccer team.