I am in the process of evaluating these two companies for print on demand options. We're planning to release ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG as a hardcover book (interior B&W, color cover) in standard 8.5x11 format. However, Lulu has an odd format 8.5x10.75. There seems to be pros and cons with both avenues.

If anyone has publication experience with these companies, I'd love to hear about it! Thanks in advance.

Definitely lulu. The quality is far superior. I don't buy books from drivethrurpg anymore, after every single one so far being of poor print quality.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;908933I am in the process of evaluating these two companies for print on demand options. We're planning to release ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG as a hardcover book (interior B&W, color cover) in standard 8.5x11 format. However, Lulu has an odd format 8.5x10.75. There seems to be pros and cons with both avenues.

If anyone has publication experience with these companies, I'd love to hear about it! Thanks in advance.

You do both as your customers are split between the two and you will generate maximum sales by having the product on both site. Of the two I prefer RPGNow's print quality and choices, however Lulu has the easier submission setup and better royalties.

In sales terms, there's no competition: DTRPG or bust. Even when I was starting out and still paying attention to it, my Lulu sales were an order of magnitude lower than DTRPG, and that was six years ago. DTRPG just has an infinitely superior marketing presence aimed at people who buy RPGs, as opposed to Lulu's general indifference to the idea.

Aside from that, there's also printing prices. A Lulu 8.5 x 10.75 hardcover of 250 pages costs $18.15 to print. DTRPG offers the same for $11.30, or if you want to upgrade to heavier paper stock than Lulu uses and throw in some colored accents, you can have it done in standard color for $14.83. Even though Sixteen Sorrows is a black-and-white product, I had it done as standard color just to get the heavier paper stock, and it was worth the extra thirty cents.

Quote from: SineNomine;908995DTRPG just has an infinitely superior marketing presence aimed at people who buy RPGs, as opposed to Lulu's general indifference to the idea.

From a customer perspective:
I will buy a book from Lulu if that's the only source but I will have to wait for a coupon since their international shipping is enormous.
And even then I have to check which of their stores accepts the coupon code...

DTRPG is much easier to use.

DTRPG also has the better preview function, in theory. On Lulu it's limited to a standard of 12 pages, on DTRPG the standard seems to be 7 pages but the publisher can decide to show more - and I encourage to do so. Especially the quick preview should show all pages, just like I would see by browsing in a store (the quick preview is still way too small to read anything apart from headlines).

Setting up digital products are much easier on DTRPG, but print products can be a pain.

Lulu it's easier to set up a print product (though still a pain) but sales are meh. Basically you have to do all the advertising of your product. I guess maybe a few people will cruise by Lulu and look at RPG products, but basically the people who buy your product from Lulu will be people you direct to Lulu to buy your product. While DTRPG you get people who want to buy RPGs and browsing there.

If I can obtain a PDF without a watermark than Lulu for sure. Last year I got some 3000ish pages of Star Wars d6 ReUp material printed as well as Marvel Heroic Annihilation.

If you can sell on multiple marketplaces there is no reason not to diversify in that way. DTRPG is the main site with the ability to sell your product as PDF and as a POD (although the printing proof process requires you to purchase at print cost + ship a proof of each printed product you set up for POD). Lulu is another option for the printed product. But setting up your PDF on DTRPG allows you to sell an additional product at lower cost to consumers and yourself without the need to cover print costs as well, so it should be your primary target with Lulu secondary.

DramaScape has 80% of its business through DTRPG but also 20% is Roll20 based through selling VTT image files direct through that platform, so diversifying has lead to a 20% increase in sales per month from our initial DriveThruRPG sales base.  So if you can diversify you can make money from several different sources rather than relying on just one sales base. We get customers from Roll20 and DriveThruRPG now rather than just DriveThruRPG alone. So it helps to have as many sales bases as you can, including your own online storefront if you can do that.

There's no question that Lulu has better book quality.  But DTRPG is way more of a centralized hub for RPG sales.  I'd probably recommend you go with both, and let your customers decide.

Quote from: RPGPundit;909552There's no question that Lulu has better book quality.

I am not so sure about that anymore.

Last week I received two full color softcover releases from DTRPG and they are excellent.

Last month I received three Lulu books. Two hardcovers that are very sturdy but in one of them (despite having the same size) the paper grain (fiber direction) of the interior is wrong, and the lamination on the softcover is already coming off along the edges.

Lulu's quality has recently dropped and DTRPG's has recently improved. I would say that the gap is pretty small if not gone.

My experiences with DTRPG and Lightning Press have been utterly abysmal. First, there's a long approval time one has to go through with DTRPG. Then there's the tortuous process of the automated system finding errors in the PDF upload that are simply incorrect. And then you have to deal with the bag-o-shite that is Lightning Press's cover generator. For example, Mythras Imperative, a 32 page, saddle stitched book. The cover generator refused me a saddle stitch option (greyed out, constantly, despite the book qualifying), then when they email me the InDesign cover template, and I follow the instructions and sizing to the fucking letter, it's rejected. I gave up and sent DTRPG a stinking email about the whole, horrible process. Never got a reply. If I harken back to when I did a test run of RQ6, five years ago, it was a bit easier, but when the proofs arrived, the interior boxed text was so fucked up that it made the book unusable. Lulu, by contrast, with the same file, had no such issues.

Lulu isn't without its faults, but it's faster, far more user friendly, doesn't cause me to screen at the computer, gets proofs to me quickly, and lets me get my products to my customers faster and with less stress than DTRPG. I'm sure there's some alchemy somewhere that makes this a seamless process, but I've certainly not had any help from DTRPG despite emails to their tech support.

So I use Lulu for POD stuff, DTRPG for PDF, and traditional print for my main print runs. I will never, ever, ever try to use DTRPG for POD again. After a 32 page booklet proved to be coronary and embolism inducing, why on earth would I? The same booklet on Lulu took me 15 minutes to upload, check over, order a proof, and feel happy about.

Quote from: Skywalker;909623Lulu's quality has recently dropped and DTRPG's has recently improved. I would say that the gap is pretty small if not gone.

Hardly. Lightning Source (DTRPG) sent me a book that looked like it was printed on an inkjet printer.

It does depends on what options you choose. Standard black and white uses thin paper at DTRPG and is still poor. You can upgrade to full colour options for thicker paper (even for black and white) at DTRPG which is good though. It may seem odd for black and white, but the price isn't significantly increased so quite a few publishers have gone this route (Sine Nomine did this for Sixteen Sorrows).

It's my understanding that both Lulu and DTRPG often use the exact same printer- Lightning Source. Variation in print quality partly has to do with paper stock itself, partly the book designer's expertise, and partly dumb luck. The old #50 paper stock that DTRPG uses still for b/w products and used to use for standard color is okay for b/w books but was not good for color. The new #70 heavyweight stock has a much better feel to it, and I know I'll be using it for all my b/w products from now on, since it's only 1.23 cents more per page to do so and lets me throw in dabs of color if I feel like it. Lulu's base stock was #60, last I looked.

Lulu's approval process is significantly faster and more streamlined, but the fact that it doesn't kick back as many errors as LS does doesn't mean the errors aren't there, it just means that no human is detecting them. LS has an actual human printer looking at the files when they come in, which is why the error output can seem capricious; I've occasionally had times when the bleed seemed fine to me, but the crusty inkslinger who was the other end wasn't sure that the graphic element that was going to get wrapped around the boards was really as sacrificial as I intended it to be. A few times, I've had covers bounced for what seemed like no reason at all, but on the second look at it, I've seen mistakes that entirely eluded me on my first pass.

Ultimately, however, it's all pretty much a moot point to me from a sales perspective. DTRPG moves so many more books than Lulu, at a much cheaper printing price, that Lulu can't begin to compete.