Questions for Lulu

Recent changes at Lulu have caused a wave of discontent. Until recently it was confined to a thread on the Lulu.com forums--however Lulu in their wisdom decided to summarily delete that thread. Therefore I will re-post the most pithy summary of author and customer consternation that had been offered therein, by Julie Anne Dawson:

"1. Why is there a $1.49 surcharge added to ebooks?

2. Why has it taken five years for lulu to "consider" offering the ability to generate coupons or offer gift certificates?

3. Why are mainstream publishers being given tools such as the ability to show a sales price, when WE have been told that we are not allowed to sell our books for less than retail on the Lulu storefront?

4. Why is Lulu's print price structure so much higher than other similar services, particularly in light of the fact that most of these services are all using the same printers! (LSI, etc).

5. Why were we told by Sherri that Lulu would have a booth at the London Book Fair, only to discover that there was in fact no booth. In fact, why is lulu "selling" book fair services at a higher price than authors can do it themselves, but still requiring the author to do all of the actual work to make sure the books arrive at the book fairs on time? Many people ordered books through Lulu to have them shipped to the London Book Fair. They followed Lulu's guidelines on timetables, and Lulu failed to deliver.

6. Why was the ability to search for only Lulu books eliminated, after we were told it would be part of the site's search functionality?"

See also:
April 26, 2007 I've Been Suspended from Lulu.com