Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

I'm puzzled by the service at Lulu.com. They look like a printer, or maybe a printer/distributor (like Createspace) or perhaps a bookstore or a publisher. Has anyone had any experience with them, know what they're about?

They are a print on demand publisher. I don't know who they distribute to, but I do know that they offer an option to print without distribution. I use them to make gift books that I don't want to sell to the public. Their prices for wholesale copies are very similar to Createspace.

The reason I'm looking around is that CreateSpace has a very slow turnaround and charges a lot for shipping to the UK. I end up paying them more in shipping than for printing, and when I'm printing proofs it's frustrating because I have to wait for them before I publish the book. If I could find a UK printer that did POD at a reasonable rate I'd switch. Bookstore distribution is not a factor for me. I've looked at Ingram and they have an upfront setup charge, so they fail the "don't pay to publish" rule. I've got a support request in to Lulu, they don't show shipping times or charges anywhere I can find.

Possible this is all displacement activity, excuse for not writing...

I just requested a quote from a traditional printer, and they wanted £75! How do people stay in business??

You might want to try Blurb

I guess the best way would be to find a publisher with a local print hub. Lulu and CS charge about the same shipping and take the same amount of time here in the states.

Lulu's much cheaper, £3 instead of $20, but a limited range of sizes. I've had to go 6 x 9 instead 5 x 8, which makes a short book look awfully thin. We shall see how it goes. Someone get CreateSpace to open a UK outlet?

I looked at blurb in the past and they seem to specialise in color books.

I think they do paperbacks with text also. At least they did the last time when I visited their site.

I'll see how Lulu does, and then see. I'm printing a previous book before entrusting my next short book to them.

Well, I'm disappointed. Lulu took a week to ship, and it looks like they're shipping from the states despite having a uk.com address. It saves some shipping cost, but it doesn't look like it's worth it, given the small number of formats they offer. Weirdly, they don't offer mass-market size (5.25 x 8.5) on the UK site, though they do on the US one. Incomprehensible, given they're shipping from the US anyway.

Richard 2060 wrote: "Well, I'm disappointed. Lulu took a week to ship, and it looks like they're shipping from the states despite having a uk.com address. It saves some shipping cost, but it doesn't look like it's worth it, given the small number of formats they offer. Weirdly, they don't offer mass-market size (5.25 x 8.5) on the UK site, though they do on the US one. Incomprehensible, given they're shipping from the US anyway."

Well that is weird. So you're not going to use them again?

Probably not. I'll take a look at Blurb. The main question is, I'm just coming up to completion on a novella, and I have to decide whether to wait for a printed proof before publishing. I probably won't, if I can't find a way to do it in less than two weeks.

well, now I'm confused. The proofs from Lulu appeared, and they're actually looking pretty good. Despite the website giving the impression they were coming from the states, they arrive in a couple of days with just local postage. The only issue really is the limited choice of sizes. I tried several, and I'm quite pleased with what they call 'small square' - a seven-inch square that works well for an illustrated book. I'll look at Blurb, but I'm less disinclined toward Lulu now. Maybe the Amazon Gods will open a UK plant and solve all my problems!

One difference I noticed, which may be different in the UK, is that Lulu's prices per page seem to reflect the different page sizes, where as Createspace apparently has one price regardless of size or shape.
I used the small square to make a cookbook one year and was pleased.

I just tried Blurb and it's a forest of complexity and missing tools. They seem to assume you have Adobe InDesign and even then make it very hard to make a simple layout. Not for the likes of me.

Yeah, I like the small square. Now I have to trade off CreateSpace (matte cover, better size range) against Lulu (fast turnaround, lower delivery cost). I'll probably end up setting both, using Lulu for proof printing and both for retail sales.

I'm not too conerned about price per page, because it's swamped by the shipping cost, for a non-US customer.

I've ended up choosing Lulu. On my website I ask people who want a paperback to order there, rather than Amazon, so they'll get it quicker. They have fixed the issue where they weren't offering 6 x 9 on cream paper, so I'm going to live with the fact they don't do matte covers. They get a book in your hands in a week, and charge only £2.99 for shipping. I guess Createspace does as well in the USA, but it's a month or $20 for UK customers.

I do my print through Lulu, and I believe the "Flag" you select as your location determines some of what options you have to choose from on book sizes as well as paper options.

The customers "Flag" determines where their closest printer-partner is located (US, UK, France), though certain hardcover choices are only printed in the US presently.

One of the pricing options that helps is you can offer a discount on Lulu that often makes your book cheaper to purchase than on Amazon, while you still get the royalty you set.

As well, if you sign on to the user fora you can direct PM one of the moderators (all Lulu moderators are employees) or pose the question to end-users, many of whom are quite helpful (though some are real putzes as is true anywhere).

Hope this helps.

I use both. barnes & get noble i can distribute through (can't with cs for some reason.) i make sure the galleys are final when i upload because i have to buy a physical proof for each change made (unlike digital proofs cs provides). i pay about the same...

Thanks, RFG. I did not know Lulu had user forums, and the thing about localised paper choices makes sense. I'm presently using Lulu and CS as "pure" printers, rather than as distributor. This is so I can keep the prices low, without the bookstore markup. On CS, there is simple checkbox or this, while on Lulu you have to follow a bizarre routine where you suspend the book, republish it, but never approve it for release. This makes it available in the Lulu store but not on bookstore shelves.

Richard,

You can actually set up a print project that won't be distributed to bookstore sites by choosing to not use an ISBN, making the books available only on Lulu, and a simpler way of doing it.

Another option is a direct access project, where the book isn't searchable so you send the project's url to a client -- this works well when you do a zero-royalty print as a promo. It works better with the economy print, slightly lighter paper (not suitable for color illustrations but okay for simple line drawings).

My problem with Lulu was that I had an existing project and I wanted to take it out of distribution. Customer support there suggested the technique I described.

Richard wrote: "My problem with Lulu was that I had an existing project and I wanted to take it out of distribution. Customer support there suggested the technique I described."

Sometimes the answers from customer support are a bit lacking, depending upon how long the person who answered the question has worked there.

I haven't checked my projects in a while but the Manage Distribution button used to allow you to take a project out of general distribution.

Since the Wife wants print versions of several on my WIPs (to read before bed) I'll see if I can find you a better way when I run the first one through.