My experience so far as of 11/28/10.
The first POD (print on demand) book printer I tried was an outfit based in Florida called Instabook. I liked their straightforward website—simplistic—no hidden fees etc. Their books? Well, I haven’t ordered any copies from them since 07, so this might be outdated information, but: The books I received were, let’s say, durable. The covers were a rough, mat finished card stock; tough, but if you have put a lot of work or expense into your cover art, don’t expect Instabook’s cover material to do it much justice. I was advised by Instabook to date my files that I uploaded. I then ordered a book and was sent a copy from an outdated file. Instabook refused to correct their mistake and said it was my fault for uploading too many files—nonsense. On one hand, Instabook never slapped me with any last minute shipping and handling fees—nice, but on the other hand, they have a very high minimum creator revenue amount—$100. Apparently, if your creator revenue never exceeds that amount, the law allows them to hang onto the cash forever, with no interest owed; either that or they are circumventing the law. So if anyone does purchase a book, you are going to have to sell a lot of books from their website to ever see your revenue. I would steer clear.
Lulu
The positive: Lulu’s minimum creator amount, last time I checked, was
$20. But again, sell a book or two from their website and they will
pocket your revenue in the meantime.
Lulu makes books that look like anything you might see in a bookstore.
Sometimes the cover sample images on their website look like highly
compressed crap, but the covers of the books I have ordered are
spot on. I have had no significant problems uploading files to Lulu
or formatting my books, with the exception that, on one occasion and
unannounced to me, my revenue settings were automatically reset to
zero. Lulu's response was that it was a “known problem.” They did take
steps to fix the problem, but nice of them to fix the known
problem
after the fact. All orders I have placed have been received promptly.
Wish I had something more to add, but that's about all I can think of.
The negative: Typical of many online retailers, Lulu did not have their basic shipping rates posted for the contiguous U.S. when I made my first order for a proof back in March of 09. Then, only after entering my personal information did Lulu slap on a last minute, flat-rate shipping and handling fee of something like $3.00 (in addition to the normal shipping cost). On an order I placed in February of 2010, the annotation “shipping and handling” had been dropped, but the basic shipping charge was still high. Not only does it substantially raise the cost of those single copy proofs that they know you are going to need, it makes you wonder how many people cancel their order for that one book that looks interesting, once they see the final shipping cost is probably half again more than the advertised price. Well, books are expensive to make, and you will probably not find anyone else that can produce one-off copies of the same quality level for the price Lulu charges, but it would be nice if they were up-front about their charges. As of writing this I don’t know what kind of shipping info Lulu is providing if any. Bizarrely, when I click on “Shipping Options” at the Lulu website, I’m directed to a secure connection, then get nothing but error messages. It is the only Lulu page I have any trouble with (about the only page on the internet for that matter).
If you upload a revision to your book, take note, the previous text file that you uploaded might display the current date, as opposed the date you originally uploaded it--a potential source of confusion. I have found it to be a good idea to always include the date in the name of the file you are uploading.
I also noticed after setting up an account with Lulu, that a tracking program had been installed on my computer that I could not remove (not a cookie or a temp file). Mind you, I have no evidence that Lulu ever did such a thing, but this is insidious, in that all Lulu would need to do then is share your information with others to allow them to track you on their own website. A few months later, the program stopped working, and I never did find the installed files.
Other than that, Lulu’s main gig seems to be pulling the rug out from under their author's, and removing features from their website. They had a content ratings system at one time—gone. Next, Lulu purchased a social networking site called weRead, and did away with a feature that allowed only persons who purchased a book on Lulu to leave reviews and ratings; thereby leaving their authors with only two options—open their work to reviews by any idiot with a keypad, or shut off the review feature entirely. Looking over weRead, this appears to be exactly the case. I saw such dribble as “Don’t like this book, don’t like this author.” Mind you, such reviews are the rare exception, not the rule, but just the same. As for why Lulu keeps removing such features, you will have to ask them. On 10/18/09, I sent Lulu a letter suggesting that all reviews be accompanied by the annotation (verified purchaser) or (unverified purchaser) to distinguish the two. My idea was apparently applied to Amazon.com, but not Lulu. It was about this time I decided the gloves were off, and began keeping a log of my interactions with Lulu.
Another subject perhaps, but regarding Weread: Here is a website that I can't quite make sense of. It is supposed to be a social network, but when you click on a book, the reviews are mostly anonymous, with the majority of reviewers apparently associated with the same name, “A Reader”—?
It was about this time that Lulu added a $1.49 “credit card fee” to their download price.
A trivial matter, but at some point in late 2009, it appears that the book ratings (1-5 stars) became disassociated with the review they were originally paired with. All the reviews on Lulu's website were apparently affected.
Although, as mentioned, they did fix the revenue problem, Lulu email support has proven very slow, with replies typically coming almost a month or so afterwards. And pay attention, you might have to reply to the first email you receive in order to have a real person look at your inquiry.
I received an email from Lulu on 11/23/09 describing a free listing on Amazon.com, which also contained a link to a Lulu webpage. The email contained no details at all, and I followed the provided link, but still was unable to locate any information about the “free listing.” Sometime later, I contacted support and was informed that I needed to go to “My Projects,” click on “Promote” and select something called “Extended Reach.” I still had to search for it, but eventually found a page that mentioned Extended Reach, only to be directed back to My Projects to see if my book qualified. However, there was no explanation as to what I was supposed to be looking for. In other words, the whole thing was a runaround. After receiving an email from Lulu asking me to complete a survey on 4/6/10, I decided to take it a step further and sent a second letter to Lulu on 7/5/10 with pretty much the same praises and complaints previously mentioned on this webpage, including the whole Extended Reach matter. As of writing this, I have not received any reply or any assistance from Lulu whatsoever on the matter. In fact, where before I was receiving occasional emails from Lulu including promotional emails, which did sell a few books, they have apparently deleted me from their mailing list, and have stopped promoting the sale of my books, as I have not received a single email from them since.
In short, nice books, prompt delivery, a fairly comprehensive publishing program, but nothing particularly special after that. And I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that Lulu tends to cease promoting books after they generate a few dollars in revenue.
12/2010: Lulu has again changed its pricing setup for downloads. Lulu's cut is now based on a 99 cent base price and a share of the asking price. Even though the change altered my revenue settings, again, I was not notified about the change.
10/1/11: Lulu goes down the tubes. Well, anyhow, I’ll start with the positive: Lulu has gotten their website much more organized regarding their distribution services. And I actually received a notice from Lulu regarding a change they were making to their storefront page (first email in 18 months), which they are now going to call the author’s spotlight—whatever. Not a big plus really but they have renamed their FAQ pages the “Knowledge Base,” and their “shipping options” page now works, although I have noticed that when I am logged on to Lulu, I get directed to a forum logon page when I click on the same link. Generally speaking, I have trouble with some of Lulu's pages being either slugish or scrambled, but my browser is out of date, so I suppose that's my fault--I guess. Lulu has added a new format, the Epub; which requires an ISBN to be distributed on Amazon.com, yet can be revised while keeping the same ISBN.
Now the negative: Rather than retype something unnecessarily, I think this letter that I sent Lulu (letter #3) pretty much explains everything. Parts of it might not make perfect sense, but then, who doesn’t have better things to do than writing letters to Lulu? Well, you got say one thing about Lulu, they are a company that certainly lives up to their name.
[Dear Sirs, on the 21st of August, I created a new version of my title “The Pegasus Mission,” #698370. The new Word file I uploaded did not convert properly. Shortly thereafter, about the 22nd of August, I changed the availability of the book from “General Access” to “Private Access: content is accessible to creator only” until I could update the book with fresh, properly formatted file. It was eventually determined through correspondence with one of your email support personnel, Alan, (case#00609582) that it was a Lulu caused problem. However, the ticket was closed without a properly formatted file being provided. On the 16th of September, I retrieved an old, Lulu created pdf file from my Lulu files from 2/12/2010 to replace the corrupt pdf. By the way, as of writing this I am still trying to create a Word file or pdf that is compatible with you conversion program.
On the 27th of September, I logged on to Lulu, to find that an EPUB version of the book had been created on the 23rd of September, despite the fact that my availability settings had remained Private Access since the 22nd of August. On top of that, a copy of the EPUB version was apparently sold two days later on the 25th. This could only mean that the copy received by the customer was either outdated or possibly corrupt. I am sure there are worse examples, but this is about the most blatant example of copyright infringement I have ever seen. You have not only copied a file against my wishes, you then sold that copy to the public. I have half a mind to report the incident to the FBI’s internet crime center. Any sale of copies of my work must be tied to the availability settings until such time that I purchase an ISBN number for the title, and the content is therefore set. If this happens again, or the Private Access feature is removed, I will withdraw my books from Lulu. If I seem overly sensitive to this issue, please remember, what may be just another title in your repertoire, to me represents years worth of work.]
On top of all that, Lulu’s email support is as slow as ever; the reply to the conversion problem was a month in coming. I have to give the support person some credit for admitting the problem was caused by "updates" to Lulu's conversion software. However, as the letter mentions, I was basically steered towards some free pdf creators, and told to fix it myself. And as described, Lulu is creating these EPUB books regardless of whether you want them to or not, and assigning an ISBN number to them. On the one hand, it might be a good thing for the book, but it also means these EPUB books generate a royalty, and I figure it’s just a matter of time before Lulu starts pestering me for my social security number. Or who knows, after that last letter, maybe they will delete my books and all this time.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism, a definite downside to small-scale publishing. Of course,
small scale or large scale, as soon as
any manuscript leaves your computer or typewriter, you run the risk of
someone stealing your ideas. I like science fiction literature, movies
and TV shows, I watch or read to be entertained, but the writer in me
is watching in order to discard it all and try to create something
original, which is my idea of the best science fiction—a good story
with some original, thought provoking ideas, or perhaps a better word would be concepts. But I am not naïve; there
are those who will steel your stuff. Case in point: There was a sci-fi
television production that aired on January 26th, 2009 titled
Virtuality. The show mysteriously never made it past
the two-hour pilot. Now, I don’t want to give away the entire plot of
the first novel that I wrote, The Pegasus Mission,
but there
are three items that appear in Virtuality that also
appear in The Pegasus Mission.
1: A long space voyage using a pulse rocket for propulsion. 2: A
mysterious man appears in a virtual reality program being used by the
crew. 3: An astronaut becomes stuck in an out rush of air.
Now, a person would have to read the book and then see the TV pilot itself I suppose to fully understand where I am coming from. One could maybe pass off the latter to items; #2--"The Matrix" & #3--an almost cliche moment in outer space adventures. But the first item, however: I chose to go with a pulse rocket mainly because I remember coming across an illustration of one when I was a kid. It must have been a very early version, from the 1950s perhaps, and looked exactly like an artillery shell with a plunger sticking out of the bottom. The drawing just bowled me over, so when I went to write The Pegasus Mission, I researched pulse rockets and incorporated the design ito my story. But there are other equally promising technologies in development that may end up powering deep space missions, so taking all thing together, something looks screwy in Denmark.
So take note, technically, your work is copyrighted as soon as you create it, but if you want better legal insurance, there are several options. The ultimate safeguard, of course, would be to register your work with the US copyright office. But before sending out any queries or uploading your work to any self-publishing outfit, I would recommend at the very least doing what I did, and that is taking a print copy of your entire manuscript, sealing it an envelope, signing it near the seal, and then taking it to a notary and having the seal stamped and dated by the notary.
1/02/12: A recent episode of the television production Fringe featured a story about a man born with chromatophores in his skin that allow him to become nearly invisible. The man goes a murder spree in order to steal pigment from his victim in order to make himself temporarily visible. (Not a big mystery to solve as to why the shows ratings are going down the clinker). Again, this is one of those times where a person would have to view both items to get the full picture, but I noticed some pretty stark similarities between pages 18-19 of Arrival of the Eye Creatures regarding the skin changing concept, with the exception that my story applies it to a creature rather than a human. An incredible example of parallel thinking, or a conceptual rip-off? The Fringe episode is Episode 7 of season 4, “Wallflower.”