There's an alternative to Kunaki that I've been hearing about: Lulu. Lulu is a print on demand publisher, allowing a small time publisher to print short or one time products.

There are a few things that I like about Lulu - it allows you to combine print and CD/DVD media in a single order. This is great if you are offering software with a hard copy manual. Or a package of e-books and their hard copy partners. Or hard copy books all on their own. Or a book with an accompanying DVD.

All of these products lend themselves to higher credibility with the target market and most of them would garner higher price tags. As Kunaki only produces DVD/CD products, it is hard to include other types of products with their orders.

Lulu allows you to customize your DVD, book or CD to your hearts content. Kunaki is limited in that regard (to say the least).

Lulu has a lot more types of products that they will produce for you. Aside from Cd's, DVDs and hard copy books, they print calendars, artwork, portfolios, yearbooks, brochures, training manuals, photo books and more. Really the range of items they will print is impressive. There's a whole new range of products that could be issued and used to make you different from everyone else who is producing the same old PowerPoint presentation with an audio voice over. Remember - be remarkable.

The downside is that they are more expensive. On Lulu a CD with Jewel case is $5.50 and a DVD with case is $7.50. Kunaki charges $1.75 per unit, plus $3.00 per order. If you are selling in singles all the time and you are not passing some of this cost onto the customer, then it would only be $0.75 difference.

Now, I haven't personally used them yet. They don't exactly fit into my business model right now and as I said they are more expensive. Having said that, there some products that are coming to mind as I look over their offerings. Calendars and training manuals with DVDs seem the most interesting right now. As another plus, they do have an API into their publishing and ordering process coming out soon - it's currently in beta. After that comes out, I'll rework my Pay Pal Kunaki and World Pay Kunaki software to use it's API and integrate it into my systems as a backup. (Remember 2 is 1, 1 is None?)

Lulu

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