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Lulu.com and weRead Bring the Power of Social Networking Communities to Publishing

Tuesday 05. August 2008 - New offering allows authors to find their audience

Now you can publish your book for free and the world will beat a path to your door to buy it. Lulu (www.lulu.com), the world’s largest marketplace for individual, educational, and corporate authors and publishers to bring their books directly to market, announced today an alliance with weRead (www.weread.com), the leading social networking application for books where readers can easily discover and recommend books to their friends on social networks and therefore, the world.

weRead gives users access to an expanded library of all books in print, so self-published works can be compared favorably, or otherwise, with Shakespeare, John Grisham or J.K. Rowling. The possibilities are virtually limitless.

“A better way of matching writers and readers is created today with Lulu.com’s free self-publishing tools and distribution capabilities complimented by weRead’s discovery, independent ratings and reviews, and readership communities on social networks,” said Bryce Boothby, President and COO of Lulu Enterprises. “This clearly changes the game in publishing by bringing together traditional and self-published works in one marketplace.”

weRead currently has more than two million registered members through social networking sites Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Hi5, and Bebo, including individuals’ websites or blogs and there are over 40 million books on members’ virtual bookshelves. The weRead community has written over 1.5 million book reviews. Among other achievements, weRead is already one of the most popular applications on Facebook. weRead’s powerful discovery and recommendation engine allows search results to be sorted by social network proximity.

weRead is headed by founders Krishna Motukuri and Harish Abbott who will divide their time between Lulu’s U.S. offices and weRead’s center of operations in Bangalore, India. Motukuri serves as Senior Vice President of Product Development with Abbott serving as Senior Vice President of weRead Operations.

“The Lulu/weRead combination is the first step toward the democratization of the book,” said Motukuri. “Anyone should be able to write a book and let the marketplace rate it fairly in a way that people can trust.”

Lulu’s worldwide print-on-demand capability ensures no book ever need go unpublished, or ever go out of print. weRead’s social discovery tools will ensure it is never forgotten — the unfortunate situation for many authors, publishers and readers.

“I was really glad to see that weRead did have my book available and that anyone could add it to their bookshelf,” said Jennifer Stevens Madoff, who created the Lulu.com book Leukemia for Chickens. “Because it is so easy to do I would definitely recommend it to other creators. These two companies coming together makes perfect sense for anyone wanting to successfully position their book out in the marketplace.”