Lulu Direct

Anytime something has come up Lulu has excellent customer service and they work with you directly (not a robot) to solve your problems.

I used this app to launch my children's book. It is pretty easy to do as long as you have the video as provided by LULU. I do like having a store besides Amazon (I had major issue uploading my book on that platform, even hired someone to help me, but we couldn't get it to work). I still haven't used this forum to its greatest potential, but I know that there are a lot of ways to boost my book with the shopify store, so that is also great!

I think the book printing drop-shipping model is a fantastic idea, and I would use it for many books, but both test copies I've received have been printed incorrectly. There is an issue with the templates that make seemingly centered designs print off-center. The other issue is that our customers don't want to wait 20 days to receive their book. For these customers to get their package in a timely manner, the book would then cost three times what it should, rendering it a useless product.

While we'd love to work with this platform, and while we think that printing one book at a time instead of ordering in bulk would be amazing, this app has a while to go before we feel comfortable using it.

We'd need to proof every single customer's order, and that would take way too much time.

Once the templates are adjusted, and once the shipping rates change, this app will be AMAZING.

I used the Lulu xPress app with Shopify to publish a commemorative book as an internal fundraiser for my college fraternity. I wanted to remove the "middle man" costs of publishing the book on an online retailer platform. The target audience for this book was very limited, and I wanted the maximum net margin for the book. The solution worked very well and support our project. We experienced an IT issue, and one book shipping issue and Lulu was extremely responsive and timely with resolving those two issues. Otherwise, Lulu xPress app worked flawlessly. Very easier to use and you can view sales in real-time. Lulu Support staff was great in responding to any questions I had. Points to consider when using Lulu xPress App with Shopify. 1. Lulu has responsive and knowledgable customer service support where Shopify really does not;
2. I needed to establish a bank account and U.S. Tax ID number to support your book project with Lulu and Shopify. I did not know this before starting the project;
3. Recommend speaking with an accountant on tax collection and tax payment for your book project. Shopify only collects taxes you specify for your book project and does not pay taxes to municipalities for you;
4. Shopify does an outstanding job of timely paying revenue to you. Shopify transfers funds collected in book sales in 1-3 business days;
5. The integration between Shopify and Lulu Xpress app is outstanding and very easy to implement;
6. Shopify recently made reporting where you have to purchase Shopify Plan $79/month. I needed reporting functionality to obtain transaction-level sales data for my book project. When I created my Shopify page in March 2021, reporting fee when purchasing the Basic Shopify Plan was $29/month.

Lulu has helped me create the products of my dreams and seamlessly integrate it into my site! I love how the products are made to order, and have had the greatest customer service experience as well. Shout out to Cary! Highly recommend!

L'app funziona bene e non abbiamo avuto reclami sulla qualità di stampa dei libri. Per ora ha solo cambiato nome rispetto alla versione precedente. Rimane il problema che non memorizza, nelle impostazioni, la regione di provenienza del mittente e ha tempi di produzione e spedizione un po lenti per gli standart attuali. Non ci pare che siano disponibili 3.000 formati! Sarebbe utile fossero più complementari a quelli richiesti da Amazon, ci tocca produrre i libri in due formati alla volta.

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.

This app was easy to use during my book launch! I had a pop up event and I was able to check people out, apply discounts, track my sales and customers. So easy!!!

Update: 2/5/2021. I am no longer using this app. I had a lot of calendars ordered that took months to arrive, and only did get printed and shipped because I contacted customer service relentlessly. I have entire threads of emails. Customer service did help get the orders fulfilled after customers started complaining, and after MANY emails back and forth. The calendars were really nice, and I would have preferred to keep using Lulu but not at the expense of my customers' business. Update: I really wanted to come back and change my original review saying things were resolved, but I can't. After multiple attempts, I finally got a human on the phone, who I thought was helpful. They did enable my product in my store so that customers could order, which they did, however, it has been 20 days now and the order has not even gone to production because the original issue was not fixed. I am stuck with $400 in sales, no product, angry customers, and still, no answer when (or if) they will get their product at the height of the holiday season. If I could give zero stars I would since they have done nothing to assist nor can I get any product. I made a calendar for my Shopify store, it shows up in my store but you can't order it, I keep getting an error message when attempting to place an order. I have contacted their customer service, no response. I contacted Shopify, they confirmed it was not on their end and contacted Lulu xPress's customer service copying me on the email and I did get an email back several days later. I sent screenshots as requested and since then nothing. I have tried for 10-days to resolve this and nothing. I will move on to another app and start over.

11/1/2023
I updated my review from a 2 to 4 after receiving a helpful email directly from Lulu about how to configure the Shopify checkout to ensure tracking auto-populates an order. The problem should be fixed now.

My other concern regarding error notifications is already being addressed in an upcoming app update. There is no ETA when the new features will be available, but it is being worked on by the development team.

Also, I would like to say the printing quality of the book is beautiful and a lot better than what Amazon can produce.

I applaud Lulu for their excellent customer service and ability to address their customer concerns in a timely manner. I look forward to using the new updates.

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Old Previous review....

The app is easy to use, and the prices for printing are double that of Amazon, but overall, it works well and gives the seller full control over their paperback book profits. Another good feature of this APP is the orders are processed automatically.

Now for the negatives. The APP does fall short. A developer can't state that an APP is integrated with Shopify if it is missing critical key features that are common across all Shopify APPS.

What is missing is error logging and notification. If an order is invalid or fails to process, it is critical this information is sent automatically to the Shopify Admin. I should not have to check my order page daily to find errors. This lack of notification support can cause customer service issues.

Secondly, your APP does not update tracking information or notify the customer when their package is shipped. The Admin gets notified, which is strange because I get notified of a shipping notification but not for order errors.

I have to add the tracking information to an order manually, which is another large gap in the design of your APP. These are common things that are in every APP.

These gaps need to be fixed and are large enough to cause my rating to drop from a five to a two. Your APP completely misses the customer service part of the Shopify business. Your design does not support the sellers properly.

Please correct this in your next update to the app. The features are not hard to implement and need to be integrated ASAP. I will update my review when these features are implemented.

Thank you for taking the time to read my review and input. I am open to assisting with developing or testing these features when ready.