ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Kevin Godby <godbyk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Hannie.

On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 2:16 AM, Hannie Dumoleyn
<lafeber-dumoleyn2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Before we start looking for others publishers, I am curious as to how
> serious the problems at Lulu were. Are they minor? Can we live with
> them? Do they affect the translated versions, or the English version as
> well?

When I said that Lulu had printer problems, I mean that some of their
printers wouldn't print the manual at all. If you placed an order for
the manual and the printer encountered a problem, you'd receive a
refund and you'd be out of luck.

It seemed like the problem only existed with certain printers. Lulu
uses printers around the world and will choose a printer that's
closest to the person ordering the manual. So when I order a manual in
the US, Lulu has a US-based printer print the manual and send it to
me. If you order one from France, they'll have a printer in Europe
print and send you the manual.

I didn't have any problems with the US-based printers. When I ordered
a manual, it would print without any problems.

However, some people in Europe had problems with the printers there.
The European printer would report an error: "A RIP error has
occurred".

The Lulu support team and I tried a number of things to fix the
problem. We changed the fonts, we removed any transparency in the PDF,
etc. Eventually, the Lulu support team and I ran out of ideas and we
gave up. That's why we moved to CreateSpace.

The last email from Lulu Support said: "Thank you for your message.
Unfortunately our support team doesn't have as much granularity into
what the specific problem is. We use several reporting tools to help
us determine the general area the problem is occurring, however we
don't have the tools to pinpoint precisely where the problem is (as it
can be different with different printers). We also don't have any
insight as to what brand of RIP server causes what errors
unfortunately. These kinds of problems occur so rarely that it
wouldn't be cost effective to trouble shoot."

So that's where we stand on the Lulu front.

—Kevin