LULU.com

[The Mad Kaiser]

Have any publishers used LULU.com? How was the experience? What quality was the printing?

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

Internally, the books about as good as what you'd get from any POD company. However, they're target market is more oriented toward publishers of novels and other suitably small books, so their available cover stock is rather thin for the typical perfectbound RPG book.

I will say that one interesting thing they offer is the ability to choose different colors of paper for the body of the book.

Finally, calculating your cover price is a bit wonky, too. They use this wierd formula that confused so many people that they ended up putting up an online calculator to help people.

Personally, I haven't used them. But I at least knew they were there, unlike some other publishers that don't do much homework.

edit:
I forgot to mention that they're reknowned for an unusually high number of printing errors. But they're also reknowned for providing a fixed copy ASAP in virtually every instance this has occurred, and at no further expense to the vendor or consumer.

 

[tensen]

The most common error I've heard from them is missing the print on pages.
Note, the I don't think I've heard of a single POD that makes no mistakes. However, as a publisher I don't see the processes as truly acceptable unless they don't make the mistakes. Because any mistakes the customer sees is seen as my mistake... not the printer. Hence, the POD scheme became a short run model if you want to make sure your customers get a good copy, instead of worrying that they got a poor copy and chose not to buy from you again, instead of reporting the problem.


LULU's use of colored paper is an interesting one. Not sure that I can see a use for it, but I imagine that someone might have an interesing concept idea and they would be the ones to assist you on it.

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

Actually, traditional printers make as many mistakes as the POD printers. However, the traditional printers can offset the costs of making corrections on the press line, since their customers are normally getting thousands of copies printed at a time. Running off 1,000 waste copies at the slowest speed the press runs at until everything comes out right ends up being rather inconsequential to them and their customers. However, a POD company printing 10 or even 50 copies of a book simply cannot factor that sort of effort into ensuring everything is right. PODs can only afford 1-2 copies per 10 of your print run as waste copies for early corrective measures. And lets not forget that POD is a computerized manufacturing process, so folks expect there shouldn't be many mistakes to begin with.

I suspect that the cause of lulu's high mistake rate is a reliance on a sheet-fed printer or copier-based low end POD system, rather than the roll-fed printers used on the high end POD systems.

 

[The Mad Kaiser]

How about the covers? Is it like RPGNow's, or is it glossy, 4-color, etc?

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

How about the covers? Is it like RPGNow's, or is it glossy, 4-color, etc?

Lulu's covers are like those of the typical paperback in the bookstore, without any diestamping. In other words, 4-color matte or semigloss finish.