The BBC has an article on Lulu called Rewriting the Rules of Publishing. They describe lulu as a cross between Amazon and eBay.
"Authors are rejected not because the book is terrible but because the publisher thinks the book will not sell enough," says Mr Young. (founder of Lulu)
Furthermore, whereas normally the novelist or artist will get a 10% royalty of sales, with the Lulu model the creator gets 80% of sales takings and the website just 20%.
Via: Salutor.