My Experience with Lulu

As I've commented on before, I ordered and received my hardback copy of my home grown rules. The book is nice, and it was a pure joy to be able to browse through it checking rule questions and doing other look ups during last weekend's game.

Binders holding hundreds of pages of rules are a thing of the pass for use now, although they remain for characters and are still useful for individual spell lists used by said characters.

I'd recommend anyone with significant homegrown rules to put them in a bound rulebook like this. Even so, I do have some comments on the process and not all are completely positive.

• The paper/binding combinations are odd. For example, you can get letter sized with soft covers but not in hardback. I'm sure Lulu has reasons for this, but it is a pain. Even worse is the limits on their abilities to offer your book through places like Amazon- the selection of format options there is quite limited.

• I used Word 2010 to produce the final PDF for printing. To do so I had to use a compatibility setting that prevented me from using some of the better formatting features (boarders and picture formatting). It pays as a result to verify what you're doing ahead of time by checking the PDF result. If one is willing to shell out the cash for the full version of Acrobat, perhaps this issue can be avoided.

• The production and shipping time is... notable. It took me the full two weeks to get my copy (and half that time for the one I sent to KC- but I used my 'proof' discount for that one). Needless to say, that was a impatient two weeks. But considering it was a custom order, it doesn't really upset me. It's just something to be aware of.

• Shipping costs are steep. I paid $10 for FedEx ground shipping that took a week. The only cheaper option was US Postal, without tracking. I'm so used to free shipping from Amazon that I was rather taken back by this. A person would be wise to keep the shipping cost in mind when making their plans.

•  The full process was very easy. Basically you download a word template so you get the margins and other settings correct, write your rules, add art if desired (I used a ton of Public Domain stuff) and save as a PDF (their online help held the correct settings for use). There after you upload the PDF, and create a cover using the online tools. You're done.

• I've read online that some have better experiences with other companies than Lulu. But I can't really speak to that (having no experience with them). Lulu did what I needed and did it to an acceptable level. Perhaps in the future I'll try another company and see how they compare.

• Unconnected to Lulu, I should note that over the years I've had a number of problems with Word (but still, little desire to change software). Basically it would lose it formatting at the oddest times. This time it was Word 2010 and it was far more stable and effective than in the past. However I found the indexing feature completely unusable.  It would automatically throw on fully editing symbol display and when I switched it back off- the formatting would be whacked. So no index, not that I'll miss it all that much.