Not a Sunday Rant but a Tuesday and very, very ***** off rant.According to lulu.com and ‘my’ Authors Spotlight I have 93 books spread over 10 pages. Let me explain.
I had a storefront. There are 49 books –comic albums, prose and even Haiku.
On the 26th August I got an “email reminder” from lulu.com that they were moving me to an Authors Spotlight (I had no choice apparently) and my store front would be closed. Now, I check my Spam folder EVERY time I see something is in there so that’s several times a day but there was never ever any initial message from lulu.com about this change over. Also, I went through all the lulu.com emails in my folders. Not a word about this.
So, I clicked on the link to my store front and…found a mess. My link was taking me to an Authors Spotlight. So, I went back to the lulu.com message and used THEIR link to my store front –same result.
I found that I could not alter the look of the pages (!). I could add profile info, and image and a banner. I did those and since the 26th August have had to do this several times –two witnesses last time! Also, Italian text keeps popping up!!!! My books are listed 2-3 times over the 10 pages, some times on the same page. Books that were in my store front have also vanished. If I search on my site I can find the books –customers cannot.
So I pointed out the problem to lulu.com –hey, they changed things over so they needed to put things right. I got the usual “we’ll get back to you in 2-4 days”. From day 6 on I emailed every day pointing out every new problem to them. Not a single response.
My wildlife book: Red Paper has been reviewed by the British Naturalists Association and another publication.
I’ve been getting emails asking why I’ve withdrawn certain books that people tried to order? I have not. They are on lulu.com but not showing to customers. Today, 13th September, I’ve had 10 emails from people who wanted to order the Red Paper –that is ten £10 orders -£100. I’m finally getting more and more people trying to buy but they can’t. I checked the site –its re-formatted itself AGAIN. Books are missing again.
Suddenly TWO emails from lulu.com show up. Phew. They are going to sort things out? No. BOTH state that they’ll get back to me in “2-4 days” but point out they are busy so it might be longer. This should take it up to the one month since ****** up point.
Meanwhile, I am losing customers and money. Something no publisher can afford.
“Delete the extra copies?” I can’t. To do that I need to delete the book and as far as I know its delete one –delete all.
What is the point of all this? I’ve had a number of problems with lulu.com before but I’ll not go into those here.
I’m working 7 days a week, 365 days of the year –no kidding:my last holiday was when Chernobyl went up so mid 1980s? I promote, promote, produce new books and publicise and…people can’t buy them.
NEVER EVER, if you have any choice, choose lulu.com to publish books through. Go anywhere else because until they get their act together its not worth the pain.
And if a certain person writes to say they are a lulu.com author and have always found them trouble free and very quick to act –I have your ISP address from the last three times when I searched for this “author” but he was nowhere on lulu.com.
Now, I’m off to prepare a complaint to the Better Business Bureau.
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