DeviantArt and Lulu?

[Amberfire]

Is Deviant Art okay to publish stories online?
What about Lulu the self publishers.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Is Deviant Art okay to publish stories online?
What about Lulu the self publishers.

I think Deviant Art is for artwork - wattpad is better known for writing. But! Be aware once you publish online it will be hard to get that work published elsewhere.

Lulu doesn't get a great rep - Lightning Source or Createspace are better regarded.

Now, ahem, sorry - what do you hope to get out of publishing? Is it just to show your friends and family what you've been up to (in which case a blog might also be worth thinking about)? Or is it to try to begin a writing profile/career? If the latter, make sure you have your work critiqued (you can put up and excerpt here when you're 30 posts in) and error free, and that your formatting and what not is professional.

 

[Hex]

I can't help with the question, I'm afraid, but I've made your question into a thread of its own. It's not really about UK agents, and it will get more answers as a standalone.

 

[Amberfire]

Thank you for the helpful replies. I will check out Wattpad.
I have a blog with most of it being non fiction. I plan to publish those into book form and publish stories. Atm I don't see myself doing a writing carreer but write for fun and to show friends and family. They don't read my non fiction blog as it's too "heavy" but they like my stories.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Is Deviant Art okay to publish stories online?

It's for images, art. Clue in name.

What about Lulu the self publishers.

It's just really a not so great POD service. Lighting and Createspace are better for paper. Createspace is owned by Amazon. Almost all Self Publish sales now are electronic format rather than paper, It's really self marketing.

If you can write lots of good books, then SP may be a good route. You need someone else to at a minimum proof read and ideally edit. A traditional publisher may consider unpublished MSS from you if the SP material is successful. If it takes you 2 to 5 years to write a book, then maybe SP route is a bad idea unless it's had a gazillion rejections, yet everyone (not friends/family) says it's great. SP can be a success at something good but outside a trad publisher's current comfort zone. Publishers are conservative.

 

[tinkerdan]

Deviant Art has a set of writing tools within its interface. The writer can even request critiques. Mostly I've seen poetry there but occasionally I'll run into a short story. I'm not sure what more you can do with them; though much of Deviant Art is set up to help sell the art work, so I wouldn't be surprised if they had some way of utilizing that for sales of written material.

For the most part I've always viewed it as a means of displaying your craft and possibly looking for commission work; however selling a few prints now and then through deviant would be helpful.

If you are looking to compile things into E-book then Smashwords is good for that along with Amazon. If you want paper copies then Createspace might be the best option. If you do all your own work on it I think you only have to pay for the copies you order.

 

[Mad Alice]

Is Deviant Art okay to publish stories online?
What about Lulu the self publishers.

Deviantart does have stories and a very vibrant writing community, however its mostly fan fiction and transgender erotica.. Not someplace i would send the family to tbh, unless they are all adults. There is also currently a very enormous creative theft problem there. In short people raid the place and steal the concepts or actual art and writing and resubmit as their own works. And the website never takes action. Also because there are a ton of semi pornographic images on there, it attracts pedofiles and perverts by the score.
That said famous artists and writers, movie studios including Disney Pixar and lucas films have done art contest campaigns on deviantart.
The last was for "Witchhunter", "the good dinosaur", and "Star Wars".
So you can get something out of the site.
But do you really need it?
My friend has been on for three years, and has over three hundred pieces of art there. All favorited multiple times, each work has over two thousand page views. And for all that not one print was ever sold. Not even a postcard. The site only advertises your work in its promotions if you pay for it.
At this stage you are trying to form a fan base I presume. This can be more easily facilitated from wattpad. Or you can even create a PDF and upload to an email link.
However if you just want to create a published hardcopy volume of your works for your friends and family to peruse, may I suggest your local business supplies center? They provide several forms of printing and binding for companies brochures and sales materials. They can do a lovely little illustrated softcover of your work. And you won't be spending the thousands it takes to self publish on demand.

 

[JonLaidlow]

Createspace don't do hardcover, do they? I only ask because I want to make a nice copy of my one published story for the 'rents!

 

[tinkerdan]

For hardcover you might have to look to POD::

Createspace don't do hardcover, do they? I only ask because I want to make a nice copy of my one published story for the 'rents!

:: I did mine with Xlibris and to get the hardcover I had to go with a higher priced package; though I did get it at half price and it included a whole bunch of extra stuff.
Added note::
If you are near a POD book distributor/publisher you might hop on down there and see if they might be willing to cut a deal. There is one near us that are used by the Barnes and Noble in town and for me to have a signing at their bookstore [B&N] (despite the fact that the online B&N has my book) they gave me a stack of forms to fill out to pitch my book to their approved supplier before we could get that started.

Incidentally that seems to be how the POD work. Your formatted e-manuscript gets sent around and the book sellers use their own qualified POD establishments to print copies. (At least for Xlibris)