Unknown authors looking to break into the book market might have a better shot after Lulu.com, the self-publishing site started by Red Hat co-founder Bob Young, said it will allow its users to sell their eBooks to readers for free.

"Being able to give away content for free is the ultimate marketing tool in this changing electronic market, which has become more and more dependent on impulse buying patterns," said Young, CEO of Lulu.com, in a release.

Lulu.com said both traditional and self-published authors are increasingly using free eBooks to boost overall sales.

The company cited Cory Doctorow, author of "With a Little Help," who said readers treat free eBooks as "enticements, not replacements" for print books.

Bob Young, whose passion for online publishing and free Internet content is hardly a secret, has committed more of his fortune to the cause.

Young has donated $50,000 to ibiblio, the online library and digital archive based at UNC-Chapel Hill.
 
Young became wealthy as the founder and former CEO of Red Hat, the Raleigh-based Linux software company. He now runs Lulu.com, another Raleigh company that sells e-books and helps authors self-publish their works.

He also has long ties to ibiblio, and previously has provided financial support to the archive. His latest gift came through the Triangle Community Foundation on behalf of Lulu.

Bob Young is a big John Grisham fan.

Young, the CEO of Lulu.com, notes on his blog that sales for the Raleigh company's self-published authors are up since it added more than 700,000 traditionally published books to its site in April. That includes books by Grisham, left, the wildly popular author of "The Firm" and other legal thrillers.

Young thanks Grisham on his blog, pointing out that new visitors seeking to buy books by mainstream authors also are discovering less-known writers and titles. Since adding the traditional titles, sales by Lulu authors are up 15 percent, and page views are up 25 percent, Young writes.

About half the people buying traditional books are new to Lulu, and 60 percent of those customers also bought a book by a Lulu author, Young writes.

SciQuest, a Cary company that helps universities, drug companies and other customers buy products and services online, filed plans this morning for an initial public offering of stock.

A successful IPO would mark an unusual milestone for the company that was founded in 1995. SciQuest first went public in 1999 during the height of the dot-com boom and its stock market value reached nearly $1 billion. But its shares tanked not long after its Wall Street debut when tech stocks slumped.

In 2004, with a new business model and a new management team led by CEO Stephen J. Wiehe, left, the company went private when it was bought by several investment firms, including Trinity Ventures of California and Intersouth Partners of Durham.

Now, with rapidly increasing revenue and profitability, Wiehe will try again to win favor among Wall Street investors.

Filing IPO plans puts SciQuest in rare company: Only one other Triangle company, Durham-based Aldagen, which is developing drugs from stem cells, has officially filed plans for a U.S. IPO. Raleigh-based Lulu.com, an online book publisher, this month filed plans for an IPO in Canada.

The expected surge in IPOs has been put on hold.

The volatile stock market is dampening interest in initial public offerings of stock. Several companies have postponed IPOs recently and one, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals of Massachusetts, slashed its price to get a deal done today.

"The market's going to be very choosy," Scott Billeadeau, a money manager with Fifth Third Asset Management in Minneapolis, told Bloomberg News.

That doesn't bode well for private Triangle companies itching to make their debuts on Wall Street. That includes Aldagen, a small Durham drug company that filed IPO plans last year, and Motricity, a technology company that still employs about 100 people in Durham, which filed plans last month.

There might be one small snag with Bob Young's plans to take Lulu.com public.

If the millionaire-entrepreneur moves ahead with an initial public offering for his Raleigh-based online book publisher, he'll need a ticker symbol for the shares.

But a Vancouver-based company, athletic clothing retailer Lululemon Athletica, already trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "LULU."

Ironically, Young is eyeing an IPO in Canada -- his home turf is a cheaper place to list a new stock.

And that's good news for Lulu: Ticker symbols for stocks listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange are a maximum of three letters.

Lululemon stock, which went public in 2007, trades under the symbol "LLL" in Canada.

So here are a few suggestions for Lulu's proposed Canadian ticker: BOK, BUK, BK, PUB, LUL, LU, RED (as in "read," also a nod to Young's previous IPO, when he ran Raleigh-based software company Red Hat) or HAT (again, a nod to Red Hat, but Young often wears one).

Lulu.com could soon land a whole lot of Loonies.

The Raleigh-based company is considering an initial public offering in Canada, according to a published report.

Citing industry sources, Dow Jones Newswires reported that Lulu is aiming to raise as much as 50 million Canadian dollars. The company has hired Genuity Capital Markets and CIBC World Markets as the IPO's leading underwriters, Dow Jones reported.

Lulu spokesman Jonathan Cox said it's company policy not to comment on rumors or speculation.

Lulu was founded in 2002 by CEO Bob Young and now helps authors self-publish about 15,000 new titles a month. Young is no stranger to Canada or IPOs.

Lulu.com will begin selling electronic books by traditional authors, expanding beyond its lineup of self-published titles for the first time.

By offering 200,000 titles from popular authors such as Dan Brown and Malcolm Gladwell, the Raleigh-based online book publisher is trying to attract more mainstream book browsers.

But the strategy also puts Lulu in more direct competition with the world’s biggest book sellers, including Amazon.com.

“As we get more selection on Lulu, we become more relevant to all kinds of readers,” said Harish Abbott, senior vice president of products.

Lulu was founded by Bob Young, left, who relishes playing an underdog role and taking on bigger corporations. Young was the former CEO of Red Hat, the Raleigh company that is the world’s largest distributor of Linux open-source software – and a rival for Microsoft.

Lulu.com earned a small but glowing plug from Esquire magazine.

The Raleigh-based online book publisher is included in Esquire's list of what to do with an extra $1,000. Along with suggestions such as making microloans, investing or gambling the money, the magazine points out that a grand will buy you "a few dozen copies of your 120-page masterpiece in hardcover."

The only downside for Lulu: Esquire mentions "two terrific sites" that help authors self-publish books to give or sell to friends and relatives. And Lulu rival Blurb.com gets the first billing.

Lulu.com, the Raleigh-based online book publisher, has inked a deal with Yahoo that will expand its potential audience.

Yahoo will post Lulu's weRead book discovery application on its redesigned homepage starting today.

The tool allows readers to use Facebook and other social networking sites to find new authors and recommendations from other users. Readers also can catalog their book collections and rate books and authors.

Posting the application on Yahoo's popular home page also could increase interest in Lulu's self-published authors and drive traffic to its main Web site. Yahoo ranked third in Internet visitors in August, after Google and Microsoft.