Wow, my first bad Lulu experience

StephenJSweeney said:

Just received my much delayed order from Lulu of my second book (intended as a Christmas present), and the damn thing has arrived without the cover. The entire front of the book is pure white.

The text printed fine, but the cover is completely blank.

Raised a support ticket, but I doubt a replacement will arrived by Christmas, now.

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Hmmm. I know that they can print books in a day (I've had some that were printed and shipped the day after I placed the order), so maybe you'll get your replacement in time.

--Ken

StephenJSweeney said:

Not sure I'll get it before December 25th.

Apparently I need first to contact support (done that), send them photos of the issue (when they get back to me) and then they need to contact the printer, talk to them about what's happened, blah blah blah... ugh.

Going to be a real kicker for unwrap a flat, white slab on Christmas Day instead of a colourful, attractive cover...

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Do your own wrap-around cover, like hardcovers have. It's easy, you can get it printed at a local shop for about .80 cents in color.

The speed of printing is less of a problem than their lag between ordering and shipping--I have ordered from their many times and the lag is normally days, sometimes over a week. Very annoying when you pay for a fast shipping method.

Just a letter? express dismay? Granted I don't know your history with Lulu, but this seems to be the first I have read of a stuff up. Normally, read of positive experiences.

They stuff you up during the most important time of the year, for what was clearly intended as a Xmas present? Correct?

I think that I would be jumping up and down, and demanding all my money back, or at least some form of restitution.

ATP said:

Just a letter? express dismay? Granted I don't know your history with Lulu, but this seems to be the first I have read of a stuff up. Normally, read of positive experiences. . . . .

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Read the AW forum thread(s) devoted to Lulu. Most of my experiences have been fine, but one error was . . . well, a Lulu, one result of which is that I have a cancelled (never actually published) book listed in Books in Print at $10,000, and with blank cover and meaningless filler inside. They pushed it into distribution without my approval (I had to cancel the project after ISBN was issued and before I approved the book for distribution), and absolutely nothing could get a response or correction, not even spending a day in their offices meeting with staff (at their invitation!) in Raleigh. I had to take steps to be sure that no one would/could buy a copy.

One of my authors received an exam copy of one of her books -- with her book's cover but someone else's (poorly designed) book inside. Lulu promptly sent a replacement at no charge when she reported that error.

They are so busy and growing so fast that errors are bound to happen. It is still a unique company with valuable services.

--Ken

Sounds like they had a glitch and didn't bother to diagnose and fix it : / --I think that can start being a problem with any big company, and increasingly with Lulu.

Stephen, have them printed at http://www.biddles.co.uk/ using the Lulu PDF's - half the price and real people on the phone to speak to!

Lulu are useless now - I put an order in with Biddles today and they have been superb up to now. The order process is amazingly simple, you wont believe it until you try after having dealt with Lulu.

PDF is a lot more tricky than people realize.

When you think your PDF proof is perfect, print it out. Also at least consider printing the cover page at at 1200 dpi color printer. You can usually print one page in color for about a dollar.

You can save a lot of headache later. If you're worried about cost, print the body of the book at two-up so you can make sure that everything prints right.

A .pdf contains both the postscript data for printing to paper, and data about screen display. The only way to be sure you check both sets of data is to print and look at the screen.