I'm not sure if Lulu gives the same effect, because you have a higher cost per book that isn't going to you, since there is a flat cost per book (unless you wanted to charge a lot, of course). But if you want to sell a $5.00 book this will let you, pretty sure there's no way to do that w/o losing money via Lulu.
I've not gone through their tutorial to see what the minimum cost is, however. Their comparison suggests how a 13$ ebook can earn you more as a writer than a $20 physical book, but once again I dont know what the minimums are.
Ah ha, goes to show I never looked at Lulu closely enough! Will have to look at that a bit, since it likely would have had a similar effect. The only differentiating point then is if people will be willing to invest more into work they put up on amazon or not, which is likely no but hard to prove. Hrm.
