Well, as I understand it, you send Lulu a PDF and tell them what quality of paper/binding you want, and they handle printing and distribution. That's it. They can certainly handle glossy photo books, and novels, and anything else you might want to print, as long as you can send it to them as a PDF.
The fic series I was thinking of would be somewhere over 100k words by the time we had it in shape for print, if we did go that way, and that's two NaNoWriMo "novels" at least. We were also talking about tying in fanart based on the series, laying out the epistolary fics as "letters" on the page (like, as sheets of paper with handwriting), etc.
On another note... I've mentioned elsewhere that I have an alternate history/historical RPF novel plotted out, and I spent a bit of time wondering whether I wanted to treat it as orig fic or fanfic. I decided that if/when I get around to writing it, I'd like to treat it as fanfic and do it here on DW, and post it as a WIP with hypertextual notes and background and whatnot, and encourage people to give feedback and play in the universe, and so on -- treating it as a fannish AU 'verse, where the fandom is that period of history. But I had also considered, if/when my own main plot arc was "finished", publishing it via Lulu, in the form factor of a novel, for those who'd like to read it straight through that way. So, there's two points of anecdata, for what they're worth.
no subject
The fic series I was thinking of would be somewhere over 100k words by the time we had it in shape for print, if we did go that way, and that's two NaNoWriMo "novels" at least. We were also talking about tying in fanart based on the series, laying out the epistolary fics as "letters" on the page (like, as sheets of paper with handwriting), etc.
On another note... I've mentioned elsewhere that I have an alternate history/historical RPF novel plotted out, and I spent a bit of time wondering whether I wanted to treat it as orig fic or fanfic. I decided that if/when I get around to writing it, I'd like to treat it as fanfic and do it here on DW, and post it as a WIP with hypertextual notes and background and whatnot, and encourage people to give feedback and play in the universe, and so on -- treating it as a fannish AU 'verse, where the fandom is that period of history. But I had also considered, if/when my own main plot arc was "finished", publishing it via Lulu, in the form factor of a novel, for those who'd like to read it straight through that way. So, there's two points of anecdata, for what they're worth.