Lulu is turning book publishing on its ear by bypassing the gatekeeper – the publishers. You can self publish your manuscript through lulu for nothing thanks to print on demand technology. Authors make a handsome commission when a book is sold. Lulu claims as many as 1,000 new manuscripts a week. Publishers will say that many are of poor quality and while this may be true for some titles, their track record on quality is not all that clean.
My interest in lulu and print on demand more generally is whether this technology will help more people enter the magazine space and professionally produce new, non shelf life restricted, titles. It seems to me that in the more special interest areas a lulu type offering could work well and enable wannabee publishers to enter the space without the costs base of traditional magazine publishers.
Lulu already allows for self publishing of books, CDs, DVDs and calendars so magazines are not a giant leap.