Lulu Direct , 69 reviews

Just installed but but wondering why it's charging me an extra $2 to print a book than on the Lulu website.

I like that it allows variants! Would be great if i didn't have to upload interior to every variant if it's the same and just choose to use the same interior and just change the covers.

We'll see what happens I might place a test order just to see how it arrives.

Lulu is by far the best and nicest company I've ever worked with. They continuously put authors' and book-publishers' needs and concerns at the top of their list. The book quality is perfect and the process is smooth and easy. The results are great and the integration with Shopify works without a glitch. And, if you have any questions or doubts Lulu personel is the nicest, most helpful people there is, while at the same time being very good at what they do! We have never had any problems with Lulu whatsoever. The few times our customers have complained is when books have not arrived – which is never Lulu's fault (but UPS's). And even at those times, Lulu has been very helpful. I would recommend Lulu to absolutely everyone! You will not find a better company.

I wanted to sell paperbacks of my own books at a discount independent of the larger companies if you know what I mean. Lulu looked good. I contacted them with my concerns and they assured me I would be pleased and there's no contract. The quality of the books is great. My readers have told me so and I have ordered them myself at cost by momentarily dropping the price on my products page on Shopify.
The only problem left was constantly having to correct shipping prices both foreign and domestic. I contacted Cary Penrose who called me at my request and patiently talked me through setting up live shipping worldwide. It worked and now my readers in England can order delivery any way they want. I find Lulu very convenient and have had no complaints about pricing or delivery. I have just started advertising internationally, so time will tell how this works out when the volume picks up.

I received the very best customer service from a wonderful person at Lulu. They helped me get my book print ready. They were quick to respond to my support ticket when I was having trouble. The trouble I was having was user error. I am a writer not a digital artist. The software I was using to create my files was bare minimum. They were happy to assist me in getting my book print ready. I love Lulu Direct and highly recommend them for print on demand.

I am very disappointed with the Lulu app. When attempting to edit my books the page will not load. I can't make any updates to my books because of this. The shipping time is marketed at 3-5 business days but all of my orders have taken 10-15 days to deliver. I get that shipping may take longer under certain circumstances but if the majority of my orders are going to take almost 2 weeks to deliver then this app is not worth my time and I would rather go a different route. If someone could help me with these 2 issues that would be much appreciated but as of now I am looking for other options.

The app is very glitchy and there are major issues with their fulfillment and printing of the books. Their site has a production time of 3-5 business days which is false advertising. When emailing them about how it is taking much longer, now on 12 business days they respond saying that they're aware of it and that I should tell customers that it is a custom printing job for each and every book and that should keep them happy. This is before the shipping even occurs. I'm only in the stage of printing out proofs and am realizing I likely will not be able to use this for print on demand and dropshipping directly to customers due to the insanely long print time. This is not a sustainable model for print on demand and more so a better model for printing in bulk and holding inventory.

Recommended. The app works well. So far, all orders have been fulfulled properly. There have been one or two minor problems which customer service have handled well and promptly. In general customer service is excellent. There are some downsides to consider before using the app:
- Orders to some locations seem to arrive very slowly... some took around three weeks. Need to let customers know. They will see the shipping time but this doesn't include production time to actually print the book. - There is basically no functionality for looking through your own orders and gathering data, even just how much you've actually given Lulu. You have to email them to ask for a csv file (which they do provide promptly)
- More costly than manually ordering from Lulu or making a bulk order. However I am glad I am using the app, despite these limitations

I appreciate the fact that this app helps save time in submitting and fulfilling orders, but the print cost / revenue shown on the Lulu.com website is inaccurate with the cost to actually sell a book in Shopify. The Lulu Direct print cost is about 20% higher than the Lulu book store cost--they say that's to cover fulfillment costs. But yet they ALSO charge an extra $1.50 PER BOOK on Shopify, listed as a fulfillment fee. That's crazy, and I'm looking into ways to get around this because having to mark up a notebook over $3.00 just to get any profit it all is not sustainable.

Everything about this app is easygoing but the processing and shipping are insane. I am better off ordering in bulk in processing the orders myself.

Lulu has been great to work with! We print and ship around 100+ books per month. Very few issues with that volume of orders and when there have been any issues Kristen with customer support has very quickly fixed the issue (even when the error was due to customer issues and not Lulu). Highly recommend!