Lulu.com

Oh my, and I was thinking of jioning lulu.com. Instead I'm making my own publishing busyness, probably called Lady Luck or something,

Kivandrohex said:

. . . Instead I'm making my own publishing business . . .

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You still need a printer and distribution. You either have to use an offset printer, with large print runs and up front costs of thousands of dollars, and some method of making book available to the trade (extracting a large percentage of the list price), or use a POD printer with a means of making the book available.

--Ken

I don't understand your problem with deleting the files. When I go, there's a button marked "delete" under My Lulu next to each book, beside the Revise button. Does that not work for you to delete your files? As far as I can recall, that's been there for quite awhile.

skylarburris said:

I don't understand your problem with deleting the files. When I go, there's a button marked "delete" under My Lulu next to each book, beside the Revise button. Does that not work for you to delete your files? As far as I can recall, that's been there for quite awhile.

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You can delete from a book's contents. That does not delete from the server. Try to delete an entire project. (Chances are you will only have the option to "retire" it.) And then go to the list of all your files there (mine now runs 10 screens or more) and try to delete some of them.

Let us know how that works for you.

--Ken

skylarburris said:

I don't understand your problem with deleting the files. When I go, there's a button marked "delete" under My Lulu next to each book, beside the Revise button. Does that not work for you to delete your files? As far as I can recall, that's been there for quite awhile.

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You can't delete a book once a single copy of it has been sold. If you use it, as I did, to make beta-reader copies, then of course it will have sold a few copies. After that, it's stuck on their servers for ever. You do have, as Ken points out, the option of "retiring" it.

Keyan said:

You can't delete a book once a single copy of it has been sold. If you use it, as I did, to make beta-reader copies, then of course it will have sold a few copies. After that, it's stuck on their servers for ever. You do have, as Ken points out, the option of "retiring" it.

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I am apparently unable to delete files even for books of which no copies were ever sold (even to myself). Evidence includes an experimental project of mine named "Junk," used just to see how the process worked, no copy ever printed. Obsolete versions of real projects likewise cannot be deleted. Bad news all around. That might have been tolerable until projects started showing up on Amazon without authorization.

--Ken

Tallent said:

DO NOT RELY ON A MEMORY STICK FOR BACK UP! These are very susceptible to static discharge. (Meaning they stop functioning.) It’s best to use a separate hard drive for backup.

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I dunno, I've had the same couple memory sticks for the past 5 years, and they've been with me all over the world. I've never had a problem like that.

Then again, portable hard-drives are cheap enough you can always use one of those, too.

It's too bad about Lulu's service falling apart. I wonder what went wrong?

jfreedan said:

I dunno, I've had the same couple memory sticks for the past 5 years, and they've been with me all over the world. I've never had a problem like that.

Then again, portable hard-drives are cheap enough you can always use one of those, too.

It's too bad about Lulu's service falling apart. I wonder what went wrong?

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Yeah, I've had good luck with mem-sticks, too. No trouble so far. (5+ years)

Except in one case, I backed a friend's files onto a memory stick, and the next day, it wouldn't read. I think it may have been defective.

ResearchGuy said:

How many pages? What binding? B/w or color? Just curious.

--Ken

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Sorry for my slow response Ken. I've been out of the country and away from the internet.

Without looking up the specifics, the book is about 100 pages full color soft cover.

The current price for me to print it through lulu is $25.50 I see the price on Amazon has dropped from the initial $40 to about $33 but that's still too expensive. I'd like to publish it on Createspace which would make the book available on Amazon but I am worried, having it already listed on Amazon may be a problem. I find it extremely frustrating they listed it there without my permission and without first notifying me of the price. I'm even more frustrated that they said they would remove any books on request, but have not removed it even though I've requested them to do so.

This same book could be listed on Amazon through Createspace for $20 with a larger profit margin than with lulu listing it at $33. The printing, my cut and Amazon royalty combined on Createspace are still notably less than lulu charges just for printing!

Unfortunately my book is formatted as an 8.5X11 for lulu and I will have to format it to 8X10 for Createspace.

Just bumping this to see how things are going with Lulu lately. I heard so many good things about them from this thread and finally started reconsidering self-publishing (for the 100th time) - but now I'm a little wary!

LisaBurke said:

Just bumping this to see how things are going with Lulu lately. I heard so many good things about them from this thread and finally started reconsidering self-publishing (for the 100th time) - but now I'm a little wary!

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I recently set up via Lulu a small (but very good!) book for a client who wanted copies for friends and family. In due time, the client might offer it for sale through her own Lulu storefront, or might authorize me to do so. I ordered 70 copies of the book after the edits had been completed, and received them in less than a week from date of order -- shipping was (even at the lowest FedEx rate) literally overnight. Apparently the books were printed at a facility in Nevada, so the delivery to the Sacramento area was prompt.

I have had a recent telephone conversation with some Lulu consultants, and explained the issues that had triggered concern (the sending of a book into distribution without the final approval, nonresponses to urgent attempts for assistance, arbitrary placement of books for sale via Amazon.com), and also described the sorts of use I have made of Lulu, some of which I gather are not what they had foreseen. I am hoping to have a follow-up conversation.

Meanwhile, the folks at Lulu.com are now (if they were not before) aware of threads about Lulu here at Absolute Write's forums, and are probably following these threads.

My sense of it, from the conversations I have had, is that Lulu.com's management is attempting to address concerns and to improve services continuously. Sure, they want to make money, and they are pushing a lot of special deals to goose sales, but I think they want to do things right. They have made many improvements over the years I have been using Lulu, and that process is likely to continue, in my opinion.

Until some issues are resolved, I would advise caution regarding using Lulu to print any confidential or highly sensitive materials. I want to see reliable assurances that nothing will be made public without approval of the content creator. I also want to see a way to permanently and completely delete files from Lulu's servers, something that now appears to be impossible for files associated with any "project" at Lulu. (I gather that files uploaded without being attached to a project can be deleted, but I've not tested that.)

Whatever its imperfections might be, Lulu offers a unique set of services. I'd be hard pressed to find a replacement.

FWIW.

--Ken

I think the problem is not so much their sincerity and hard work, as their willingness to do things with books that their own terms of service do not authorise. That broke any sense of trust I had in them.

veinglory said:

I think the problem is not so much their sincerity and hard work, as their willingness to do things with books that their own terms of service do not authorise. That broke any sense of trust I had in them.

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I read them the Riot Act on exactly that point. I think the folks I talked with were paying attention. As I bought some ten grand worth of books from them last year, they might consider my views (which mirror yours on that point) worthwhile.

--Ken

I hope they do get back on track. Because barring my current crisis of faith they are the best option out there.

In light of the Lulu Lens posting on the Lulublog and the comments here, I have just posted an article on the issue this evening on POD, Self Publishing & Independent Publishing.

http://mickrooney.blogspot.com/2009/08/lulu-through-looking-glass.html

Forgive me if this has already been asked -

What are the shipping costs like? I'm interested in a ballpark figure for one book, 50 books or 100 books for an approximately 200-page 6X9 book. Whatever info you've got, I'll take. Just trying to get an idea.

LisaBurke said:

Forgive me if this has already been asked -

What are the shipping costs like? I'm interested in a ballpark figure for one book, 50 books or 100 books for an approximately 200-page 6X9 book. Whatever info you've got, I'll take. Just trying to get an idea.

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Try seventy-five cents per book as a ballpark figure. But of course it depends shipping method. Lulu uses what seems to me to be excessive packaging, but the books arrive in good condition.

Once you have your book set up, you can experiment with the shopping cart, picking quantity and then going to checkout to look at shipping costs. Then back up and zero out the quantity.

--Ken

ResearchGuy said:

Try seventy-five cents per book as a ballpark figure. But of course it depends shipping method. Lulu uses what seems to me to be excessive packaging, but the books arrive in good condition.

Once you have your book set up, you can experiment with the shopping cart, picking quantity and then going to checkout to look at shipping costs. Then back up and zero out the quantity.

--Ken

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Thanks Ken, for that information.

Lulu

Hi, everyone. I was wondering what kind of experiences writers have had with lulu..

Daniel

Hi,Daniel. Welcome to AW.

There is already a huge, lengthy discussion of Lulu here. Do the search, and I'll bet you'll find all you want to know there. If you have other questions after reading all the posts there, that would be the place to ask them.

Nandi said:

Hi,Daniel. Welcome to AW.

There is already a huge, lengthy discussion of Lulu here. Do the search, and I'll bet you'll find all you want to know there. If you have other questions after reading all the posts there, that would be the place to ask them.

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This may be a newbie question, but is there a way to read a thread in reverse so I can see the more recent information about a topic?..

Daniel

coloneldax said:

This may be a newbie question, but is there a way to read a thread in reverse so I can see the more recent information about a topic?..

Daniel

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It is an option in your User CP. Edit options, and scroll down. Then save the changes.

See http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=111541 for hundreds of Lulu posts.

--Ken

How do I get the most relevant info without reading the older posts?

coloneldax said:

How do I get the most relevant info without reading the older posts?

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You probably don't. Start with most recent and work back until you know what you want to know. And if you have a question that does not appear to have been answered, post it on that thread.

--Ken

ResearchGuy said:

Until some issues are resolved, I would advise caution regarding using Lulu to print any confidential or highly sensitive materials. I want to see reliable assurances that nothing will be made public without approval of the content creator. I also want to see a way to permanently and completely delete files from Lulu's servers, something that now appears to be impossible for files associated with any "project" at Lulu. (I gather that files uploaded without being attached to a project can be deleted, but I've not tested that.)



--Ken

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I wish I had read the thread a couple of weeks ago. I just published a private project that I definitely do not want sold publicly for a variety of reasons. It's meant just for small number of family members. I made it available only to me. What's the risk now that Lulu will screw this up?