Lulu Direct , 74 değerlendirme

I'm a small (2 product) self publisher of natural history field guides (BYOGUIDES) who was badly burned a few years back by Shipwire. The combination of Shopify / Lulu has allowed me to relaunch my business without the hassle of warehousing and arbitrarily changing Shipwire policies. The Shopify / Lulu interface / model is not 'simple' to understand or navigate initially, especially if you are trying to distribute globally to small oceanic territories as well as the big ones (e.g. North America). So if you are not a web / developer type I would say you should find someone with solid Shopify store building experience before discovering the many rough edges. I would have rate the Lulu App 3 stars but for Lulu tech support haven been STELLAR and patient as we beat a path (together) to the solution I needed for my customers. I am seeing evidence of constant improvement in the APP but there are still numerous rough edges must navigated daily. For example: there are form field character limits in the Lulu world that are NOT surfaced to the customer in Shopify world. Consequently, orders constantly crash because there is one-too-many characters in a field. The SHOPIFY system doesn't tell you this so they need to discovered by manually checking the Lulu app after each order arrives and hand managed through by me and sometimes tech support. It's a hassle but it is getting better as time goes by.... I could go on esp. w.r.t. to having to manually set up multiple freight rates around for every country you MIGHT sell to - this was auto-magic with my previous solution. But the bottom line is that the system is viable and getting better and there is good support. But if your time is worth anything (or you want to go holidays and relax) make sure you partner with a developer with Shopify store building experience and focus on doing a bunch of test orders that mimic who, and where, your customers are - especially if they are outside the US and EU. Finally, Lulu printing itself, while efficient and of excellent quality does have format limitations. For example, a limited selection of paperweights such that everything feels like a coffee-table book when you might need something with more heft for practical purposes. Also, if you coil bind you can not get a straight run of pages and are forced to have a blank page at the front and back of you book. Otherwise great.

Many if not most of the reviews here are terrible, especially considering that this is a company that more or less boasts that they are "Masters of the Print on Demand" book printing Universe.

Um, I don't think so.

Many here are complaining of really poor customer service as well as comically mishandled orders. Well, I haven't gotten yet to the mishandled order stage, but I have received really poor customer service.

I have been STUCK for about ten days now not getting too much done with LuLu although lately I've been able to forge ahead and make some progress mostly thanks to my own efforts. I finally managed to get one book accepted by the Lulu "platform." With AMAZON, everythng was INSTANT, worked the first time, and took mere minutes, not days. All this time I've been emailing and getting mostly ignored. Incomplete answers provided every 3 to 4 days, at best, with total radio silence in between.

I told their support via email about four hours ago that I had had it and that I was going to be leaving this one star review.

More radio silence.

THEY.DO.NOT.CARE.

They're Masters of the Universe, remember? sarc/

I used this app to help me sell my book. I went through a self publishing process and when I was ready to go to market, Shopify provided all the tools needed to set up my on line store. I was particularly pleased to receive expert personal attention when needed.

Working with LuLu and creating books directly on their website is easy and the quality of the books is superb. I gave the app 2 stars because it is more expensive to go through the app with a fulfillment charge on top of that. Better off going directly through LuLu website, it is free as well. I also found that I can't connect my LuLu books already made online into shopify without having to redo the entire process of creating a book through the app.

We're issuing "how to" mini-books and this is a convenient and streamlined way to deliver our products straight to customers.

While the product creation was fine, and the order process appeared to go smoothly, I've ordered a total of 5 books between two orders, and haven't received a single one.

**edit**

Customer service via Joseph has been very helpful with my initial problem, my review has gone from 1 to 3 stars after resolving the misunderstandings that were easily resolved. Holding off for the exciting conclusion to give a final review.

**second edit**

After some swift service from Joseph, my initial order was reprocessed and I finally had 3 copies of our book in hand, and they're absolutely beautiful. Far exceeded my expectations.

I'm hesitant to give the full five stars, because there was definitely some kind of mix-up in shipping with the first order, but the quality of the books and customer service is four stars well earned. I've reinstalled the app and will be giving it another go.

At first I was intimidated by Lulu’s self-publishing platform because I had never published a book and am not proficient in Adobe Suite products which several of the templates require. My customer support expert, Tim S, was fantastic. He answered all my many questions, in detail, within 1-2 business days and was helpful in sending me templates to help me format my book. He even helped prepare my files when I ran into a printing issue with certain images not printing correctly - he helped me understand what the problem was with my file and fixed the issues for me so that my books would print correctly. When I received a damaged book I ordered for myself as a sample, he issued me a refund so that I could get a new sample book clear of shipping damage, which was considerate. He was always professional, positive, responsive, and immensely helpful in the setup process of my book. I am so grateful to have had his support through the file creation process and initial ordering process to help me get my book set up online correctly. I'm proud to now officially be a published author and happy the quality of the books looks very nice. I can't speak to other customer rep experiences at Lulu but Tim S. was 5 stars! Thank you Tim!!

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.

Lulu xPress is an application designed to drop-ship books using a simple interface to upload your cover and interior and quickly go on sale. It does exactly what it says it will do.

While there are alternatives, Lulu is a world class provider of books that is difficult to avoid when reading about publishing options for the independent author. The interface does away with print ready pdfs and any need for human interaction when proofing a book but also makes the process intuitive so anyone can do it just like their more well known distribution options. xPress opens up their services to independent publishers as well with Press and the customer service of a long standing / reputable company already in place is really great.

This is a new application. Updates very frequent and we haven't had any issues.

App works but so much room for improvement. It's buggy and often hangs and spins. The connected books cannot be easily filtered in a search and requires you manually search page by page to find anything (a real PITA when you have lots of titles!).

The benefit of the app is that it connects shopify orders and, for the most part, it does achieve that. However, it often causes lots of unnecessary frustration in the process.

Hoping the developers continue to work on this app to improve the functionality and ease of use for the end users.