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Post by JesusNinja on May 23, 2020 5:16:00 GMT
Two of my books were going really slow being added to other sites. I filled out the form in projects and received an answer in about two hours. The person was very polite and apologized. Apparently I had one book rejected because of "incorrect" interior cover? I checked and it was correct although there were two versions there and one is corrupted. Hoping I got that fixed.
But in the meantime, this person sent me this:
Please note that due to our site upgrade we paused sending titles to our Global Distribution retail partners. We anticipate resuming normal distribution operations by the end of June, 2020.
You can expect that any existing published titles will continue to be available on the Global Distribution retail network. All sales continue to accrue and will be credited to your account once we resume operations. Updates and changes to your titles will be collected and queued up for processing when we resume activity.
I hope this helps. If you need anything else, do not hesitate to let us know.
Kind regards,
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Post by adrianallan on May 23, 2020 9:15:56 GMT
I feel let down and DECEIVED about this.
This upgrade was touted as weekend fix - by Monday it would be business as normal.
They made no mention of suspending global distribution and there is no mention on the page or an email notice. They obviously don't want us going over to rivals, where global reach is still available.
So rather than be honest and let us know, a decsion was made to keep us in the dark and potentially miss out on lots of sales.
I never thought I'd say this, but Lulu are not a decent company and I will start to take my business elsewhere.
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Post by JesusNinja on May 23, 2020 23:57:37 GMT
I wouldn't have known either if I hadn't asked them about two of my books that weren't moving onto sites fast enough. Even know one of them out for six weeks is still not on any site but Inook and Ibooks. The other one has been out just before the update and is only Ibooks. Not sure what the problem is getting ebooks out faster. Used to take two weeks at the most. Losing money and time this way and they are too. But anyway the person who responded about the books told me about the pause in distribution. I think that the site is so screwed up or they are so overwhelmed that pausing it is the only to get work done. But this is losing them money and people are leaving. The site update has cost them customers, and having to hire more people, more money than intended. It wasn't very well thought out for sure.
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Post by reinholdbehringer on May 25, 2020 9:11:01 GMT
I feel let down and DECEIVED about this. This upgrade was touted as weekend fix - by Monday it would be business as normal. They made no mention of suspending global distribution and there is no mention on the page or an email notice. They obviously don't want us going over to rivals, where global reach is still available. So rather than be honest and let us know, a decsion was made to keep us in the dark and potentially miss out on lots of sales. I never thought I'd say this, but Lulu are not a decent company and I will start to take my business elsewhere. This seems to be the reason why currently one cannot delete projects from Lulu - they are now locked into Lulu, even if they cannot be globally distributed until end of June (which, based on the accuracy of their timeline "estimates" will be more like December...). And this is intended to prevent us from publishing these projects anywhere else, while we authors remain in "lockdown" at Lulu, without global distribution. A very unethical move by Lulu! Probably their global distribution toolchain is as corrupted as the website initially was... Even while some aspects on the website are getting better, there are still no updates on the financials (no payment history). This indicates that their whole system is still broken. |
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Post by adrianallan on May 25, 2020 10:08:10 GMT
Agreed. This whole upgrade has been a disaster from day one. It's almost a text-book example of how to get things wrong.
The first rule in business is that if you annoy your customers, they will take their business elsewhere. Any sense of loyalty or trust has been broken probably for the majority of users.
If a team of experts are working on this 24/7, how come it's not been fixed yet?
I know there are millions of books, but surely the whole idea of ICT is to be able to make global changes and to not have to go into every single file and patch things up. If there are no global solutions a month later, I'm thinking that aspects of this sorry mess are probably unfixable.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on May 26, 2020 18:54:17 GMT
In order to avoid being "locked into Lulu" there is a simple way to get printed content deleted or retired, enter a support ticket since only Lulu Press Support can delete or retire anything at this point.
When I opened a ticket about ongoing issues when I replied to the copy / paste message I received I told them to delete or retire all my print projects and I'd decide on Epubs later.
A week later when I got a copy / paste reply to making sure my ticket was open I let them know the exact same thing, delete or retire all my print projects and I'd decide on Epubs later.
Now I get to sit back and wait to see if simple instructions will be followed.
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Post by JesusNinja on Jun 4, 2020 20:30:13 GMT
Better yet as someone suggested. Just go in and revise all books replacing the interiors with blank pages, and the covers too. Set them for General only.
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