So, there appears to be an increasing overlap of POD content available on both Lulu and DriveThru RPG.
Any opinions on who's got the better quality product?
I've got an order that should be printing any day now from Lulu, and I've been happy with them in the past. Just curious about the "competition" as it were.
I've had far better quality from Lulu in the past, but they appear to be about the same these days.
Quote from: kythri;1068243So, there appears to be an increasing overlap of POD content available on both Lulu and DriveThru RPG.
Any opinions on who's got the better quality product?
I've got an order that should be printing any day now from Lulu, and I've been happy with them in the past. Just curious about the "competition" as it were.
I'm also curious. I once purchased a book through Lulu. I noticed that instead of a color hardcover, it would be a color slip jacket over a plain hardcover; right after I placed the order..... Dammit!!!
I immediately regretted that. The other vendor offered a color hardcover for nearly the same price. Damn a color slip jacket!!!
I've had better luck with Lulu. A couple of books I ordered on DriveThruRPG were nearly unreadable.
I don't know about Drivethru, but Lulu has no quality of their own unless its process has changed; the printing is outsourced to local printers, and so can vary from area to area or even order to order within the same area. Lulu itself prints no books.
I have more from Lulu, I think 8 to 4. The softback quality seems better at Lulu, the hardback quality seems better at DTRPG. But it's too small a sample size.
Lulu.
DTRPG is getting better, but Lulu is better in both soft and hardcover.
Quote from: Loz;1068270Lulu.
DTRPG is getting better, but Lulu is better in both soft and hardcover.
Glad to hear it, since I just bought Mythras and the Classic Fantasy Expert Set from Lulu on Cyber Monday. :)
Quote from: EOTB;1068268I don't know about Drivethru, but Lulu has no quality of their own unless its process has changed; the printing is outsourced to local printers, and so can vary from area to area or even order to order within the same area. Lulu itself prints no books.
That is how just about every POD company works.
I'm not sure about quality comparisons, but Lulu at least uses printers in Australia, so the postage is reasonable.
Print shops are everywhere these days. Books are books.
Quote from: EOTB;1068268I don't know about Drivethru, but Lulu has no quality of their own unless its process has changed; the printing is outsourced to local printers, and so can vary from area to area or even order to order within the same area. Lulu itself prints no books.
Yeah, I think it's pretty random depending on the printer. For the stuff I have I think my drivethru purchases seem more solid than most of the Lulu stuff, which for the UK I think is typically printed in Spain. My
Stonehell Dungeon I from Lulu has pages falling out after heavy use.
Lulu is a little better at printing. Lulu is a lot better at packaging!
I wait for the Cyber Monday sale every year and catch up on whatever I missed over the course of the year.
Quote from: TheHistorian;1069092Lulu is a little better at printing. Lulu is a lot better at packaging!
I wait for the Cyber Monday sale every year and catch up on whatever I missed over the course of the year.
Not here in Europe. DTRPG is better at packaging and far quicker to ship. Printing quality is pretty similar.
No experience with Lulu, but I've bought several print books from DTRPG this past year, both soft and hardback. The quality of these books have been quite good.
Thanks for all the feedback!
I haven't been disappointed with any of my Lulu purchases, but I'll have to give DTRPG a try soon.
My old Stars without Number hardcover (original edition) from DTRPG/Lightning Source felt shoddy from day one. Books from Lulu books were clearly better quality, but they also miscut a few books. (You know how when you lay a book down flat, the pages should be perpendicular to the surface? They weren't. They visibly slanted, because the pages on top were a good quarter to half inch wider than the pages on the bottom.) But to be fair, Lulu replaced the books, and the newer books from DTRPG seem to have improved in quality, so I don't think there's a big difference these days. Both also seem to have pretty good customer service when things go wrong.
Though I agree there's a vast difference in packaging. Lulu tends to be bulletproof, with books shrink wrapped to a board. But DTRPG screwed up one of my orders earlier in the year and sent me the wrong book 3 times. Not one of the four boxes had anything resembling packing material in it, unless you count a solitary packing slip. Their shit tier packaging is why I'm always hesitant to order from them.
Quote from: Pat;1069325My old Stars without Number hardcover (original edition) from DTRPG/Lightning Source felt shoddy from day one. Books from Lulu books were clearly better quality, but they also miscut a few books. (You know how when you lay a book down flat, the pages should be perpendicular to the surface? They weren't. They visibly slanted, because the pages on top were a good quarter to half inch wider than the pages on the bottom.) But to be fair, Lulu replaced the books, and the newer books from DTRPG seem to have improved in quality, so I don't think there's a big difference these days. Both also seem to have pretty good customer service when things go wrong.
Though I agree there's a vast difference in packaging. Lulu tends to be bulletproof, with books shrink wrapped to a board. But DTRPG screwed up one of my orders earlier in the year and sent me the wrong book 3 times. Not one of the four boxes had anything resembling packing material in it, unless you count a solitary packing slip. Their shit tier packaging is why I'm always hesitant to order from them.
It's interesting how different and completely opposite our experiences are.
Quote from: uferschnepfe;1069336It's interesting how different and completely opposite our experiences are.
I think because both firms use a variety of printers there isn't much that can be learned from comparison.
Quote from: S'mon;1069339I think because both firms use a variety of printers there isn't much that can be learned from comparison.
They don't seem to use a lot of different printers, though. So it may be valid at a very general level, e.g. in the U.S., or in Europe.
So, my "Cyber-Monday" Lulu order showed up in the past couple days.
First, the return address on the box/label is Morrisville, NC, but the tracking information shows that it shipped out of Agawam, MA, which would lead me to believe it was likely printed by Millennium Press in that city.
This was my second order ever from Lulu. My first order was a similar Cyber-Monday sale in 2015, where I bought 12 items (a bunch of Kalamar stuff, and a couple other items). I didn't find any issues with anything in that order.
This order was 8 items (3 hardcover, 5 softcover/perfect bound). Only issue was one of the hardcovers, the casewrap seems to have the image enlarged too much for the cover, causing cutoff images/title banners where the cover wraps. Additionally, the casewrap/cover is misaligned (slightly tilted to the right).
I've opened a support ticket with them, but given the holiday weekend, I won't hear back until Wednesday at the earliest, so we'll see how they handle such a situation.
What has everyone's experience been with any POD company replacing books that came out wanky?
Quote from: Spinachcat;1069679What has everyone's experience been with any POD company replacing books that came out wanky?
Both have replaced books easily.
Quote from: brettmb;1069682Both have replaced books easily.
Agreed.
They may ask for a picture or some other details, but have never challenged me on a replacement.
Welp, got my reply.
The casewrap image enlargement/cutoff issue, they're blaming on the publisher, and that there's nothing they can do to fix it (though, they know exactly how to, considering they sent me a screenshot of the publisher preview tool). They say the publisher needs to correct their cover image.
As far as the casewrap being canted such that it is, I need to send them another photo, this one with a ruler showing the misalignment, and once they have that, they'd print another, but it'd still have the cutoff issue.
I'm trying not to be annoyed at them - I understand they aren't necessarily setup to play layout/design for all of their publishers, but for something like this, you'd think they'd just silently fix the damned problem. I'm certainly not swearing off of Lulu, but this has prompted me to give DTRPG a try the next time I have the opportunity to get something POD from them.
If it's a publisher formatting issue, expect DTRPG to do even less than Lulu. DTRPG has been managing Wizards of the Coast's old catalog themselves, and uploaded a number of products with poor scans or missing content, like maps or counters, and they haven't exactly been quick about fixing them. See the discussion under FR3 or GAZ4 for examples.
No quality control at DTRPG. If the publisher screws it up, they don't even check it.
Quote from: brettmb;1069984No quality control at DTRPG. If the publisher screws it up, they don't even check it.
Speaking as someone who works at a POD facility, the moment the printer "fixes" a file, we have publishers, authors, etc. screaming bloody murder that we changed their book without their permission. (I once fixed a spelling error on a cover that was DELIBERATELY misspelled, for Christ's sake...) Nope, opens up too much liability. Best we can do is send the publisher a message saying there's been a complaint and they need to resubmit files.
Quote from: sniderman;1069989Speaking as someone who works at a POD facility, the moment the printer "fixes" a file, we have publishers, authors, etc. screaming bloody murder that we changed their book without their permission. (I once fixed a spelling error on a cover that was DELIBERATELY misspelled, for Christ's sake...) Nope, opens up too much liability. Best we can do is send the publisher a message saying there's been a complaint and they need to resubmit files.
I'm with you on that, but they should check the files and then block approval until the problems are fixed.
EDIT: Some of the errors are completely obvious yet the files are approved. When I tried to set up a hardback book a few years back, they sent me the book printed at 72dpi. Now I certainly did not send 72dpi files, but how can they not see that something is wrong? They made me pay for it too. I haven't used their printing other than cards since then.
DTRPG uses Lightning Source, which I also use, and one thing I would warn people about is the 240% total ink coverage limit on covers. Maybe Lulu has a similar limit, not sure, but this was a change that LS introduced and when they did, it upset a lot of people. Since then, I've found it to be a potential issue and it generally makes it harder to have covers with colors that look vibrant and alive (not impossible, but you need to have artists and layout people who understand how to work within that limit). And if you should end up with a piece of art that exceeds the limit, you will have to do surgery to bring it inside the 240% mark (which often turns into a gradual process of making the colors more muddy or faded until they don't exceed the limit). Another issue is dithering (which I presume Lulu also has). You need to be careful with your tones in the interior pages because LS printings tend to dither if they have a swath of gray or black to print.
Quote from: brettmb;1069991I'm with you on that, but they should check the files and then block approval until the problems are fixed.
EDIT: Some of the errors are completely obvious yet the files are approved. When I tried to set up a hardback book a few years back, they sent me the book printed at 72dpi. Now I certainly did not send 72dpi files, but how can they not see that something is wrong? They made me pay for it too. I haven't used their printing other than cards since then.
Oh, I absolutely agree. We have a preflight process all files go through where we check for low-rez art, odd coloring, to light/too dark halftones and gradient shades, etc. We bring these to the attention of the publisher before we accept the files as ready-to-print.
How about Amazon's print on demand? Any thoughts on it?
I'm not a fan of Amazon, too much politics, but I did purchase a few print on demand books from them recently. I believe their service is called CreateSpace. I previously purchased a print copy of Alpha Blue at DriveThru (OneBookShelf), and then I bought a copy from Amazon for a friend for Christmas (wrapped it in brown paper and everything, ha). The Amazon copy was of much higher quality paper and quality in general. I'm in the Western United States.
Edit: Amazon shipped it in their usual bad manner for books, though. It somehow managed not to be all messed up, thankfully. OneBookShelf's packaging was very nice and damage resistant. Packaging quality is something to take into account for these services too.
Quote from: sniderman;1069989Speaking as someone who works at a POD facility,
Sniderman, what are your suggestions and tips for POD publishers? Especially small press RPGers?
What are the most common and costly mistakes? What should people know that they don't?
Createspace is no more. They've moved printing operations over to Kindle Direct Publishing. Same quality, which is generally better than OBS/Lulu and also cheaper.
That's right brettmb. Thanks for the correction. Yes, I was pleasantly surprised by Amazon's service, compared to lulu and onebookshelf.
I'll be checking this out, for certain.