Writer's Fallout Shelter

Definitely know what you're getting for your money.

$75/hour to make changes to a finished manuscript wouldn't be out of line, but if you expected professional typesetting, formatting, and offset printing and got POD instead, it's ridiculous.

With Lulu, you choose your own font - because you're the one doing the formatting. You don't submit a manuscript in Courier, like you would to a publisher. You are it. Writer, editor, DTP professional. You want changes? Unpublish the book, make changes, upload a new file. (PROOF YOUR BOOK by buying a copy BEFORE you buy an ISBN and additional services. For the cost of one book plus shipping, you can save yourself a great deal of heartache.)

Lulu provides distribution (online storefront) and they deal directly with the printer. POD uses a very high-end (DocuTech) color copier. Got that? VERY high end. Nothing wrong with it (this isn't your dime-store copier!) It's affordable because it doesn't use one-time-use plates and other expensive setup processes. You'll be pleased with the final output. But the old rule of "garbage in, garbage out" applies. If you produce a good PDF input file (of the right size, with correct margins), you should get EXACTLY what you expect. The covers are glossy, four-color process covers on decent cover stock, so you should be pleased with those, as well. But again, if you don't know anything about graphic arts, find someone who can make you a custom cover or use one of Lulu's.

For some of us, that's part of the fun of POD. We did it all. If the book looks good, it's all to our credit. If it looks like crap, we're pretty much all to blame. Some people have looked at mine and expressed surprise that it was POD and cost me NOTHING to set up (nothing but my TIME, I might add - that has value, too, you know). That said, I've bought other authors' books from Lulu, and some are better. (One of the authors there is a past president of the Society for Technical Communications. I haven't yet bought her book, but I would venture a guess that it's even better than the ones I've put together!)

Some are awful - hideously awful. Therein lies the continuing "perception problem" of POD.

Remember: Garbage in, garbage out. With POD, there's no one to stop you from making an ass of yourself in public.