Lulu Direct

ANOTHER UPDATE: Poor communication, especially with price increases, delays etc. I wish they would communicate with us about pending price increases as they affect our bottom line.

UPDATE: Rating updated from 3 to 4. The company is committed to making things work, and it is seen. Customer service is 10 stars! Top notch. They are very responsive and kind and work very hard to resolve issues. Things have improved since my last review. Give them a try. I believe in this app and will keep using.

Old review
Not sure how to review this app. On one hand, I am happy to have the app, but it is so new they are STILL working out bugs. Very frustrating.

Lulu is a dream come true. You are able to print books on demand and ship them all over the world! But that is where my love affair stopped. The app is new and there are constantly kinks.

The support team is responsive on half of the issues and none responsive on the other half. So I am somewhere in the middle of loving this app and hating the growing pains.

PROS
You can get your book printed on demand and shipped all over the world.

CONS
My first order was messed up, thank goodness I was the guinea pig on the order. I always do a test order to see what the customer sees. Still waiting on a response for a REAL reason why my book was printed incorrectly and everyone else was not.

If you are selling a few books this app is great. If you are selling a few hundred books, be prepared to spend hours manually fulfill all those orders yourself. Very time-consuming. I am so happy for this app, that I am willing to overlook this. But the app within Shopify is very difficult to maneuver back and forth for order fulfillment. You will need patience.

International shipping is not tracked. I hope they resolve this issue soon as of right now there is no way to provide proof of delivery. (as sellers we need this protection) Cheapest shipping option internationally says 'priority', but priority shipping has no tracking info. The next best options will cost twice as much as your book. Again, happy to have the app, so will keep overlooking these issues and pray Lulu works it out.

I will wait patiently until they work the kinks out. When they do I will update my review.

I am new to the Lulu xPress app, and I have had more than 100 orders go thru the app in the past 2 weeks. The problem is, I can only see my most recent 20 orders within the Lulu app, if I try to click beyond the first 2 pages - it does not show the rest. I am not able to access the status, tracking or customer information for those orders via the app and this is a potential nightmare waiting to happen during the holiday season.

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.

I am noticing a very inconsistent product when ordering. I ordered 3 copies of a book entitled "Life's A Journey" that should have been printed in an 8 1/2" x 8 1/2" book format. I received 3 books in 8 1/2" x 11" format. As I didn't need them immediately I didn't open the package until to longer after the order.

Then I ordered a 2nd book entitled The Wonderfully Wacky World of those Crazy Critters Around Us!". Again 8 1/2" x 8 1/2", color book. It came in the correct size but was in B/W. LuLu's put in a request to reprint it with expedited shipping. Shipping was delayed, it arrived in color, whoever, the shipper had managed to mangle the book.

I am now attempting to secure an updated version of the 2nd book; however, the system isn't allowing me to connect it to the right item. Therefore, I can't get it in their system so I can request a printed copy to see what I might get this time.

More than a bit annoyed at the lack of quality. I can see how my customers would feel if getting charged for a product that didn't arrive as specified and requested.

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.

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.