After one screw-up after another with these people I thought it was just me. But it seems that this POD service that tries to nab new creators/publishers to use its services is getting an increasingly bad reputation. Let me say now that I am expecting the “usual” person who comments that lulu.com is an excellent and widely used service -we outed this as a lulu.com “worm” whose job it is to talk down criticism as an, uh, “unconnected” publisher (one whose name does NOT appear on lulu.com).
I got this comment left today:
RC Helicopter book Apr 9, 2012 11:06 AM
In the last 4 years I have published 3 books with LULU.COM. In the beginning I could not say enough good words about their publishing service. Now I cannot say enough bad words. This year has been nothing but screw-up after screw-up with excuses. They changed their url’s so none of the links to my books would work.
Their search engine cannot find 2 of my books. They removed the authors “store-front” and replaced it with their “authors spotlight” which cannot be organized to move titles or remove titles. They stopped providing sales reports to the authors with no notice or explanation. Their “help-desk” is absolutely no help. They don’t answer their email – and it is nothing but bla bla when they do. Their open” forum removed my post. LULU.COM is not only a sinking ship – but they are taking down their authors with them.
There ineptness is not only costing me money but it also ruining the trust and faith that I have worked so hard to establish with my customers. And once trust is lost – it is nearly impossible to regain.”
This is one of many. Interestingly, lulu.com can delete your books over anonymous claims (but as they are in the US the complainee is identified legally and in my case I used a solicitor to great effect) and you have to prove you have permission to use and publish your own creations. Anyone out there have a legally drawn up contract between themselves and…themselves?
Printers tend to over-complicate things for publishers with lots of tech guff. In the UK if there was a printer using submitted pdf the same way lulu.com does they could clean up. No “£250″ set up charges (for what???) no “Add tweeters to your gillyfoils at 450 mandrake per inch and cosmogenise the sub strata -then send us hard copies in case”.
POD printers use high quality photocopiers (in lulu.com case their printers quality varies from great to downright poor) -its not printing plates or printing presses.
I was going to use Ka-Blam but I’d need to resize and then resave as tiff several thousand pages as they will NOT accept jpegs, pdf files etc..
There MUST be a service out there doing print on demand who’ll accept pdfs?? Come on, Fallen Angel Media just suddenly dropped out of printing so some company on its “uppers” in this economy is in with a chance!
But here is the deal. You’ve had problems with lulu.com stupidity then add a comment to this post which I’ll save in its own category so you can find it later.
lulu.com is an intermediary service provider that stores your files. It is not the publisher nor is it the printer. We, its authors/customers take full legal responsibility for our efforts and lulu.com has to realise that its reputation is now shredded and making many new publishers back-off. Word of mouth at conventions and on internet groups is the most powerful tool you can use. They mess you up then kick up all hell over it. Go to the Better Business Bureau or better still go see a lawyer.
A publishers life is hard enough without lulu.com making it impossible.
TO LEAVE A COMMENT ON CBO RE LULU>COM GO TO:
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2012/04/10/lulu-com-a-lost-cause/
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