THE Group for Authors! discussion

A friend bought a hard-copy of my novel from lulu.com a year or so ago and gifted it to their son, who didn't get around to giving it a serious look until recently. Turns out it was a misprint; the top margin is blank and the text bleeds off every page at the bottom. I contacted lulu and sent the requested pics, and after a lengthy wait and several repeat emails they finally responded, saying it had been too long and the best they could do was offer a discount on another purchase. Yeah, right---like I'm going to buy ANOTHER book from the company that just refused to stand by their product!

I don't see the rationale behind their policy. They can hardly claim that the print dribbled off the page while the book sat waiting to be read.

Wow. I'm so sorry that happened to you. Count that against using Lulu's to print my next book.

Eric wrote: "A friend bought a hard-copy of my novel from lulu.com a year or so ago and gifted it to their son, who didn't get around to giving it a serious look until recently. Turns out it was a misprint; the..."

When I tried to format my book myself, the margins were all messed up on the test book I ran, with the print dribbing off the bottom of the page, and the margin at the top blank. Even though it looked fine on the PDF I created on the screen. So I had to have someone format it for me, and since then it has been fine.

Did you find that you ran a test book, and it was fine, and then a later book got messed up? That would be very odd.

It was a one-off flaw, so far as I know (or so I dearly hope). I ordered copies after the novel was available at Lulu, and I know others who did so, and they were all fine. This was before the misprint in question was ordered. My brother-in-law (bless him), ordered something like 20 copies, to be used as gifts. Those were all fine, and all before the misprint. The novel in question was not self-published, by the way, but published and provided to Lulu by Double Dragon Publishing.

It was a production glitch by Lulu, and I'm extremely disappointed that the company does not value their quality reputation enough to replace a single, obviously defective, book. I traded many emails with Lulu, advising them that I thought it would be less costly to stand by their product than to suffer the cost of all the negative publicity that I was promising, but apparently they thought otherwise.

It is not a huge issue, but it will cause me to look for other POD options.

One thing that is interesting about Lulu, unless I've misundewrstood something along the way, is that copies ordered directly from Lulu are printed at a different location than copies ordered from Amazon or BN.com. It might be useful to know which it was.

That is really strange and alarming, though. I'm sorry it happened to you.

I didn't know you could from Lulu via Amazon or B&N. All my interactions have been directly through Lulu's website.

I had numerous issues and zero cooperation from Lulu. I very quickly dropped them and won't consider trying them again. Two or three others with whom I've conversed expressed similar experiences.

I suspected as much. I've heard that createspace is pretty good

People speak well of Createspace, but I'm strictly into ebooks, so I don't have any need for them.

Scott wrote: "I had numerous issues and zero cooperation from Lulu. I very quickly dropped them and won't consider trying them again. Two or three others with whom I've conversed expressed similar experiences."

I am almost ready to go ahead with Lulu. What problems have you had with them? I'll wait to hear from you.

Well, it's been a couple of years, but if I recall, I was trying to upload a Word file for ebook conversion. I used the same file that had successfully uploaded to Smashwords and Amazon but Lulu could not convert it. I reviewed their instructions numerous times before I contacted tech support. In my email I quoted the passage from their manual that seemed applicable. A couple days later their response told me to read the manual.

I person I know had some hardcopies printed. He claimed to have had problems but I don't specifically recall what they were. I also recall corresponding with at least two individuals, probably at LinkedIn, who said that they got no support from Lulu.

I haven't had any problems with Lulu myself, I do vaguely recall however some comments about a problem with a print run a while back, although I think it was more recently than a year.

I am still awaiting my proof from CS (after 3 weeks)so as yet can't comment. I think as someone said Lulu outsource their printing. It also depends which shop you buy from.

I am not defending their bad customer service but having worked in customer service industry there is often a time scale within which to return items, even faulty ones. Seems a bit much though if the items was that bad.

I've had great response from CreateSpace (on three books, two of mine and one a friend's) and from Kindle Direct Publishing. Also excellent product.

Glad to know about Lulu, even if the news is mixed.

Thank you all for your comments.

I looked at #CreateSpace for hard copy of my book http://www.thecloudsstillhang.com/ but their T&Cs kind of rule out my book.
I've used Lulu and their print seems fine so far, but very expensive. No wonder all my sales so far have been as ebooks.

I think the problem with Lulu is the actual store isn't too bad price-wise but to sell on Amazon or anywhere else you need to add a couple of dollars/pounds to the price. 8.99 or 9.99 is pretty pricey for an Indie paperback imo and no one goes to Lulu store.

The real problem is bookstores. Bookstores insist on getting 50% of the cover price or more. My book is priced at $14 (and Amazon slaps on another 50 cents). At that price, I make about 80 cents on every sale through Amazon, and about $4 on orders through Lulu. A bookstore wants $7 on every sale of a $14 book. So there is no margin at all for me to run a real bookstore business. There are a few bookstores that carry it because of local interest, and it's been ordered at bookstores in various places around the country, but it doesn't make it into your average independent bookstore. Lulu doesn't really let you know that their pricing structure rules out bookstore sales when you sign up with them.

That said, I've enjoyed working with Lulu generally. I've found them helpful, and the book quality has been OK.

I'd just note that even for CreateSpace the pricing structure is set to make it as unprofitable as possible for authors if anyone orders their books except through Amazon.com or CreateSpace itself.

My first book sells for $12.99, of which I get approximately $3 if a person buys it through Amazon, $6 if they buy through CreateSpace (but no one does), and 50 cents for sales through bookstores.

My second book is 50% longer, so I originally charged $14.99 for the print edition (which seems like a lot to me), which worked out about the same for CS and Amazon. But before I could allow people to order through bookstores, I had to raise the price by $2 because otherwise I would have lost money on every sale. Even now, of the $16.99 sticker price, I make less than 50 cents on bookstore sales.

Amazon.com loves us, so long as we are funneling most of our income their way. ;)

For individual bookstores, you could collect a check from the sales manager at some pre-agreed price, buy the books yourself, and have them shipped to the store. But obviously that doesn't work for sales not generated by the author, and you are stuck with the shipping charge on top of the printing charge. So it seems like a rather dicey financial transaction.

Lulu have priced my paperback http://www.thecloudsstillhang.com/ at $32.22. Guess what? No sales. In the UK, at £19.52. No sales. OK, so it's a long book, but nobody's buying at that price.

That's right - the longer books just cannot be profitable as print on demand.

Another reason that I'm sticking with ebooks,

Yeah I wouldn't spend that on a paperback:)

One thing to add here though - you can bulk order from Lulu for a lot less per copy, keep it in a warehouse, and perhaps be able to have a professional operation that would let you sell to any willing bookstores. Because we get the luxury of only committing to pay for books we've actually sold, the economics change.

The competition is trade paperbacks, which here cost $11.99-$19.99, not mass-market paperbacks. There's no way to match the cost savings of offset printing at huge runs in a POD shop. That's why I put a ton of effort into typesetting my books in InDesign and submitting a PDF rather than sending in a Word file: I want it to look like a trade paperback.

That only works, of course, if you have InDesign and, like me, 20 years of typesetting experience. ID's a great program, but it costs an arm and a leg. And the typesetting has a bit of a learning curve, too.

Haha learning curve- translation it is a p in the a to use.

That's right - I think that the standard cost is just 3 or 4 bucks per book at a real printer, and that makes it possible to walk into indie bookstores with a copy of the book and give them an offer they can actually consider. With Lulu, it just isn't possible to do that, most bookstores will not even consider it, but, that said, for a book like mine and with my initial ambitions for it, Lulu worked out fine.

Steven wrote: "That's right - I think that the standard cost is just 3 or 4 bucks per book at a real printer, and that makes it possible to walk into indie bookstores with a copy of the book and give them an offe..."

From 26 years as an independent publisher, my understanding has been that the issue for retailers is that POD books can not be returned if they don't sell. A publisher, and that could be you, can place books manufactured however with a retail bookstore IF you are willing to take them back if they don't sell. And yes, retailers expect the standard discount off the list price, 40%. So publishers must have a big enough marging to be able to offer reseller discounts.

C.P. wrote: "The competition is trade paperbacks, which here cost $11.99-$19.99, not mass-market paperbacks. There's no way to match the cost savings of offset printing at huge runs in a POD shop. That's why I ..."

Decades of layout and graphic design experience PLUS all the sofware has really helped me too, lol.

Devorah wrote: "Steven wrote: "That's right - I think that the standard cost is just 3 or 4 bucks per book at a real printer, and that makes it possible to walk into indie bookstores with a copy of the book and gi..."

Some (most?) independent bookstores who accept indie books at all consider them on a case by case basis and then take them on consignment. So the issue there is not the issue of returns, since they could eventually say, hey, this thing has been on my shelf for 2 years, do you want it back? I found this is really the way to sell these things - just carry them around and walk in the door whenever you see an indie bookstore.

The 40% discount really seemed weird to me! If i brought in a paperback book priced at $5, the store wants $2 - 3 on it. If I brought in a trade paperback priced at $14, the store wants $7 - 9 on it! Same space on the shelf!

Devorah wrote: "Decades of layout and graphic design experience PLUS all the sofware has really helped me too, lol."

LOL, indeed. Happy to meet another publishing minion!

The main issues I've had with Lulu are their outrageous prices for hardcovers especially, and their requirement that you buy a hard copy rather than just look it over electronically to see if it looks okay format wise, and if the margins are correct, and if any illustrations look alright. CreateSpace lets you check your work with their electronic stuff.

CreateSpace is more user friendly with their editing in general too.