Customer ReviewsforLulu Press, Inc.

I published my autobiography on Lulu in 2007 & revised it in 2014. At first I made a handful of sales at Lulu & opted to distribute via ****** & other online retailers hoping to boost my sales. I noticed what appeared more used copies being sold on ****** than I'd been paid for & when I contacted Lulu I was told it probably was a case of a handful of copies being resold multiple times. However I have begun to see a number of retailers offering new copies with several listing more than 50 in stock. When I contacted ****** I was told royalties for online sales come from my publisher. When I contacted Lulu I was told sales made by retailers are responsible for paying me my residuals. Who is printing all the new copies being offered online? It's clearly not Lulu as they haven't been paying me anything in several years. ****** does have an inhouse printer so it's likely Lulu shared my book files with ****** to print copies with. Something isn't right with this situation as no one is taking responsibility to pay me what I'm due. Lulu claims to take copyright infringement seriously yet there may be unauthorized copies of my book being sold online in significant numbers. Is Lulu behind releasing my intellectual property into the marketplace in such a way I've lost control of my manuscript? ****** Book Search was a disaster pushed at me by Lulu; as instead of a brief review of my book posted online, my entire book was posted for everyone to read minus a couple of paragraphs at the end of each chapter. That would make pirating my book a cinch; as a person could copy & paste my book then republish it themselves. This situation stinks to high heaven! Of course Lulu has the perfect firewall to protect against disgruntled authors trying to contact them about problems like this, as there's no way to directly contact a real person & the emails appear to be handled by their automated system that only gives generic responses to inquiries. This isn't a good way to do business!

Thank you for contacting Lulu via the BBB. We have reviewed our online ticketing and chat system and were unable to find any contact from the email address provided with this review. If you have additional questions, we encourage you to go to the bottom of our home page and click the Contact Support link (also available via the Resources tab at the top of the page) and fill out the form. This will create a ticket so that our amazing support team can answer any additional questions you have. In the meantime, we will also provide more information about the listings on Amazon you are seeing here. Third-party sellers list thousands of books at a time. They typically scrap data from ISBN agencies and other bibliographic feeds to mass-create their listings. They do not buy books ahead of time or keep stock. Often these third-party sellers list books as "used" or "new" even though they have not yet purchased the book. The seller only places an order for the book once they receive a purchase request from a customer. The book may be purchased by the seller on Amazon (who would then print the book) or through Lulu. In either case, you would receive your author revenue for this sale and it would be reported to your author account on your Sales & Payments page. Third parties from Amazon's marketplace or other marketplaces such as eBay can resell used books if they have existing copies at any price and you will not receive any additional revenue from those sales. You receive revenue when a new book is purchased from us or from one of our distributors. We are aware of third-party sellers listing Lulu books at a markup on Amazon. It is not something that we can control. Using Amazon's marketplace, any book can be sold at a large markup by third parties. Google Book Search was provided as an option to all of our users a few years ago as a way to provide a preview of your title. It displayed 20% of the content at a time; but Google chose how to display it and would pick a different 20% of the book each time. Users could choose to opt out if they felt like it was not beneficial. Lulu does take claims of copyright infringement seriously and we have a reporting link on every product page so that content can be reported. Most other major sites do as well, and if you feel like your title has been published somewhere illegally, we encourage you to find that link or reach out to the store to report it. If you have additional questions or would like clarification on any of the above, please create a support ticket via the Contact Support link and we will be happy to assist you. Kind regards, Lulu Press, Inc.

Really terrible quality books. Even when using their templates for designing the book, the book came completely off and has white lines at the bottom of the book even with the full bleeds given. I contacted them and they reprinted it but sent the same terrible quality with all the prints off on the reprint too. The quality is absolutely terrible and they should not be in the market of printing photo books. I suggest using a different company for printing any photo books, even if you have to pay more it is worth it because Lulu Press is a major waste of time and money. Especially if you plan on selling your book! The last thing you'd want is to sell your photo book through a company that can't even print and put the book together correctly.

We are very sorry to hear that the reprint that was done for you did not turn out as expected. Lulu prides itself on producing high quality books for our users, and while misprints are rare, we take them seriously when they occur. We see that no new contact with our print team has been initiated. Please reply to the last message you have from the print team agent that was assisting you previously and provide an image(s) of the new book. If the new book is defective we will contact the printer again to monitor another reprint and rectify the issue. We will also reach out to you directly in case you no longer have the email from the agent.Again, we are sorry to hear this did not turn out as expected and hope you will give us the opportunity to provide you with a satisfactory resolution.Kind regards,****** *.Lulu Press, Inc.

LULU is a scam operation!!! Buyer beware!!! Why? I made a mistake by listing 1 or 2 books out of 35+++ , that allegedly were not mine to print, after offering the author [someone else] royalties and I received his permission in writing! LULU WASN'T INTERESTED!Well that didnt stop LULU scammers from canceling my entire account!!!!! They offered me no opportunity to rectify the situation, no second chance, the phone center is a scam, they take no calls, and blocked access to my account!! I spent 5 weeks uploading my titles and images and now they won't even give me any access after not even giving me a single warning. Reputible companies like ******, You Tube, Amazon KDP and Book Baby dont block access without warning! Unless LULU scam .com rectifies this with me quickly, I will warn other about their brutal dealings with people. I urge the BBB to lower their rating which is anything but A+. How can they be rated A+ when shunning legitimate customers that spend ******* a year in printing!

Lulu takes all claims of copyright infringement very seriously as we seek to protect all authors from the illegal distribution of their work. When a claim of infringement is received, we provide the infringing party the opportunity to provide evidence that they have the rights to print the material. In this case, no evidence was provided that showed the copyright owner provided permission for the work to be reproduced and therefore the account was, and will remain, suspended as per our Terms and Conditions.

why would anyone want to do business with a company that doesn't have a phone. I have tried contacting them with problems by email with little or no help. I am going to see jf I can offer them money for them to give up all rights to my book.

Thank you for reaching out to Lulu via the BBB.While we do not have phone support at this time, we are available via email and have live chat weekdays from 10am - 4pm Eastern time. We see that you reached out to us a few times via email, and agents have responded to you each of those times; however, it doesn't always appear that you received our responses. The most recent reply email was sent to you by an agent today and a previous message in response to this question was sent February 9, 2024.Please be sure to add lulu.com as a safe sender in your email. In addition, if you have not received a response to a message within 48 hours, please check your spam, junk, and/or marketing folders as our message may have been routed there by your email provider.For your convenience, I will also include the answers to your questions here. Lulu.com holds no rights or copyright on your work and makes no claims or restrictions on the ownership of your work. Rights and copyrights remain with you as the author and creator and you are free to publish elsewhere if you would like. The Content section of the Membership Agreement outlines the rights maintained by both Lulu.com and the account holder and can be found here: ******************************************************* If you have any further questions, please reply to the last email that was sent to you to reopen the support ticket so that an agent can further assist you.Lulu Press, Inc.

I have not been paid my royalties in two months, what's going on? It used to be on the 17th of every month, but now Lulu has not sent me anything since November--what's the issue? I sent in a support ticket since there's no landline on their end. Before I take legal action against Lulu, I went this route first. Fix the issue before I contact an attorney.

Thank you for reaching out to Lulu via the BBB.Our support staff responds to inquiries Monday - Friday during regular business hours. We were able to locate your support ticket that was submitted Saturday. An agent will reply to you within the next ***** hours.Thank you for your continued patience.Lulu Press, Inc.

Lulu did a fairly good job of printing hard cover books that I just gave to family and friends. But they were very expensive for the quality of their work. When I wrote a book that I intended to sell to others, I discovered that Lulu changes so many fees that an author will make almost nothing. In addition their printing charges, and miscellaneous charges create a situation in which an author must price their book so expensively, that there will be very few sales. In the case of my paperback version, I would have to charge $29.99 to make the same profit I would make from having the book printed on another site and charging just $9.99 for it. That is triple the sales price for the same book.

We are sorry to hear your experience with Lulu was not what you expected.Lulu does not charge any fees to sell printed books on our site. If you sell only on Lulu, you can sell for any price above the manufacturing cost. Authors take 80% of the net profit on the sale of a printed book and 90% on an ebook. If an author chooses to sell through retail sites, retailers charge distribution fees equal to 50% of the sale price Retailers retain this fee and use it to offer discounts or promotions and to make a profit. This does cause the minimum list price to be higher than if an author sells only on Lulu. An illustration of how revenue is calculated can be found here: ****************************************************************************************************************************** are always happy to answer any questions around pricing and revenue, please submit a support ticket from our Resources page if we can be of further assistance.

I"ve had an open ticket for five days, and haven't recieved any customer support. Also, you owe me money that was due yesterday.

Thank you for contacting Lulu via the BBB.We were able to locate your support ticket and see that an agent responded the same day it was submitted. Unfortunately, it looks like we got an undeliverable error message on the email. After comparing the email address entered for the ticket and the one used here on BBB, it appears there was a typo. We have asked the agent to resend their original message and you should be receiving that soon.We apologize for the delay. Please reply to the email if you have additional questions.Lulu Press, Inc.

I placed a purchase for a photo book with Lulu recently; I admit, the book came out quite nicely and I enjoyed how easy the process was to upload and order. However, as I looked back at my bank statement, I noticed that a month before I placed my order, probably when I was estimating the shipping costs, they ran a charge to my card. When I inquired, it took a lot of pulling teeth over email (no phone service) to finally get them to admit that MY card and MY name were used for a charge on the date that I mentioned, but a different email address. When I asked to what email the invoice was sent or to what address the purchase was delivered, they claimed they couldn't tell me anything more. This is fraud. Unfortunately, I had to cancel my card and re-assign all my recurring monthly charges.

Thank you for reviewing Lulu via the BBB.We sincerely apologize for the confusion regarding a potential charge on your card. Please note, we take account and card security very seriously, and in this instance the agent was a bit too cautious about providing information that might have helped us clear the air.We have asked the agent to reach back out and provide some additional context.Again, we apologize for the confusion.Kind regards,Lulu Press, Inc.

We have used lulu for our book publishing. In 2020, we created a book with over 200 pictures and uploaded it to Lulu.com. We chose premium print and paper. While the quality was good, they outsourced the printing and shipping took way too long. We switched to a different company. This year we published a ******* picture book. The other company was not paying, so we switched back to Lulu. Lulu now outsources (or owns) to a printer in **** and books are received in a very timely manner-approximately 10 days. The quality is great. Our overseas customers take advantage of the lulu overseas printing options which allow them to get a hard copy book with reasonable shipping charges. Look for coupons on ******** or Retailmenot to get 10-15% off of your orders to keep the price down.

Thank you for your review of Lulu. We are certainly happy to have you back!We are proud to offer quality products with world-wide shipping options. We do recommend signing up for our coupons via our email list or looking on Lulu's social media pages for the most current coupon codes.

**************** level is ****** have bots managing their chat help.Nobody takes a call- if you can find the phone number from a third-party site.Why would anyone do business with these people?

Thank you for reaching out to Lulu via the BBB.We apologize for the delay in responding to your support ticket due to the Labor Day holiday. We see that an agent has responded to your inquiry and we encourage you to reply to their message with any additional questions you may have.While Lulu does not currently offer phone support and our chat support does have automated support outside of our chat hours; we will be happy to assist via email and our support tickets.Thank you for your understanding and patience. We look forward to assisting you.Kind regards,Lulu Press, Inc.