Aug 25, 2017
Staying Away From Lulu
Or how ruffling feathers can get your story removed from a publication. Just another day in the life of a writer.
I recently called Lulu out on what they do to self-publishing writers and how they take advantage of them by using deliberately unclear and muddy policy on royalties. Lulu set my royalties to 0 (zero) while pricing my book at twice the Amazon KDP’s price without letting me know that I’m only getting payed for what’s sold in their obscure store, and not for any sales to the major retailers — which is where most of the sales take place.
Amazon KDP, on the other hand, makes it very clear just how much you are going to earn when you set up the price, and is not in the least deceptive. That’s why I called Lulu a SCAM. SCAM in a sense of Merriam-Webster dictionary definition: “deceptive act or operation.”
All hell broke lose as a result — there were some who agreed that Lulu is not a good choice, and some who came out of nowhere, had 1 or a couple of followers and no history of ever publishing on Medium, who attacked and slammed me. In the end, this group succeeded in having my article removed from the publication — The Writing Cooperative notified me today that they have been forced to remove it due to controversy they wish to not be a part of.
No hard feelings, I completely understand and have no issue with their decision, but it’s interesting to see what happens when you start talking about the more disturbing aspects of self-publishing business. It then becomes clear from the reactions just how much money can be made in self-publishing — only not by the writers. And it’s also clear that those who are making profit off of our work in less than honorable ways are not willing to let go, at least not easily.
Last but not least, I gave Draft2Digital a stellar review, I’m going to praise Pronoun, and I’m happy enough with Amazon KDP as well. I have no stake in any of these platforms, I’m not their affiliate, and if Lulu deserved it, it would get 5 stars from me as well. Sadly, this wasn’t the case and that’s nobody’s fault but Lulu’s.
Update: some of these same people went so far to open new accounts on Medium only to keep harassing me in the comments of this post. I blocked those again, for I’m not getting into further discussion with Lulu’s trolls.
A word of advice to Lulu — star working on getting sincere 5 star reviews instead of trolling and harassing those who write about their experience with your platform.
