If you’ve been following me on Twitter (@Grimachu) you know I stumbled across a huge issue with Lulu.com. Namely that there is a HUUUUGE price differential between producing a book in A4 and producing a book in US Letter format, this despite the fact the paper is virtually the same size and there’s not really any problem getting hold of US letter (American Quarto) in the UK or Europe (I know, I’ve checked). Apparently this isn’t a mistake, even though the excuses given (popularity and difficulty getting US Letter) don’t really hold water.
Even though it isn’t a mistake it has, apparently, rung alarm bells in their customer service department as many people didn’t know there was this huge difference in price and nobody seems to really know why this is the case – yet. Someone’s looking into it for me and I’ll let you know when I know.
After about a week of back and forth I have, however, wrung some good news out of them. I am being refunded MOST of what I was ‘overcharged’ due to all the problems involved and that will, largely, cover me until I can get around to re-sizing all my existing books to a more wallet-friendly format (A4). Fingers crossed that the couple of computer programs I have for the purpose will make resizing the PDFs relatively painless now, and in the future.
This may have a knock-on effect, however, for home-printing of my PDF games as those not – explicitly – designed for home printing may well, now, be designed for A4 from the get go. I’m still deciding what’s the best way to go on that from here.
Meanwhile, all you other small publishers, I very, very strongly suggest that if you’re going PoD that you go A4 rather than US letter as this will let you either charge less, or get more profit.
One thing I will say is that almost everyone involved at the other end (with one glaring exception) has been very helpful – once we got past the form letters and scripts. If you want to solve any problem their live support chat is the best way to go.
Postmortem Studios 