The following post by Julie Anne Dawson is reprinted with permission from the Lulu forums.
All Lulu Authors: Please Read. This Concerns You
http://www.lulu.com/product/book/the-last-song/7024654?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1
So now Lulu is not only selling ebooks by traditionally published authors, but it is also selling print books by traditionally published authors. Now I don’t particularly care about Lulu printing these books themselves. How the books get printed is of no concern to me. But what IS of concern to me is the preferential treatment these books are getting as opposed to OUR BOOKS.
Referencing The Last Song for points:
Preferential pricing: This is a 413 page book, selling for $10.94. Do you know what my cost to print a 413 page book is? $12.76! It costs me almost $2 more to print than this book sells for! And if I went through retail with the book, with NO ROYALTY the book would sell for $19.52. WTF!!!???
Preferential tools: Notice that this book has a “retail” price and a sale price? Well, I have been asking for this FOR YEARS for US, and Lulu has systematically refused, claiming that they couldn’t let us sell the books on Lulu for less than what the book retails for due to contractual agreements with Amazon and other vendors. I think this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt Lulu was LYING.
I have always assumed that when Lulu did something stupid, it was because they were doing something stupid. But this, this is downright CORRUPT. Lulu is whoring itself out to the big publishers to make money? Why? Because they never figured out how to make enough money on self-published authors? Well, maybe if you had bothered to listen to us all these years and give us good tools you would have made money.
I AM DONE.
Today I will be retiring all of my products at Lulu. I can’t even stomach being associated with Lulu anymore. Createspace has a distro program now. I don’t even need Lulu to get listed in online bookstores, and CS gives me better pricing without bending me over. I have spent thousands of dollars with Lulu over the years. They will never see another f-r-i-g-g-i-n- DIME from me.
All Lulu Authors: Please Read. This Concerns You
http://www.lulu.com/product/book/the-last-song/7024654?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1
So now Lulu is not only selling ebooks by traditionally published authors, but it is also selling print books by traditionally published authors. Now I don’t particularly care about Lulu printing these books themselves. How the books get printed is of no concern to me. But what IS of concern to me is the preferential treatment these books are getting as opposed to OUR BOOKS.
Referencing The Last Song for points:
Preferential pricing: This is a 413 page book, selling for $10.94. Do you know what my cost to print a 413 page book is? $12.76! It costs me almost $2 more to print than this book sells for! And if I went through retail with the book, with NO ROYALTY the book would sell for $19.52. WTF!!!???
Preferential tools: Notice that this book has a “retail” price and a sale price? Well, I have been asking for this FOR YEARS for US, and Lulu has systematically refused, claiming that they couldn’t let us sell the books on Lulu for less than what the book retails for due to contractual agreements with Amazon and other vendors. I think this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt Lulu was LYING.
I have always assumed that when Lulu did something stupid, it was because they were doing something stupid. But this, this is downright CORRUPT. Lulu is whoring itself out to the big publishers to make money? Why? Because they never figured out how to make enough money on self-published authors? Well, maybe if you had bothered to listen to us all these years and give us good tools you would have made money.
I AM DONE.
Today I will be retiring all of my products at Lulu. I can’t even stomach being associated with Lulu anymore. Createspace has a distro program now. I don’t even need Lulu to get listed in online bookstores, and CS gives me better pricing without bending me over. I have spent thousands of dollars with Lulu over the years. They will never see another f-r-i-g-g-i-n- DIME from me.
Comments
It wouldn't shock me at all to find them going even more mainstream. At work, I had a hospital request a medical text that was published with Lulu recently.
"What a funny name? I've never heard of them before," the caller said.
"Oh, I have. Funny indeed," I said.
But we bought the book for them and now Lulu is a vendor in our database.
-Shannon
I know I lean toward the paranoid, but . . .