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I got home from a quick trip to find a tiny little box in my mailbox.
Lo and behold, it was from Lulu, but the box looked too small to contain a book.
I opened it up, and what do you know – there’s Android Planet.
And just like I thought, the box isn’t wide enough to fit a book.
AP was wedged inside until it fit. It now has a permanent S-curve shape to it and it won’t lie flat on a table.
I hope Lulu’s return policy is a good as they say on the website, because this is unacceptable.
Why would they even use boxes that aren’t wide enough for a book? They used to use those great flat packs that could easily fit a few books in them. Must be a money saving measure. Not this time.[b]Ultra wrote:[/b]
[quote]I got home from a quick trip to find a tiny little box in my mailbox.
Lo and behold, it was from Lulu, but the box looked too small to contain a book.
I opened it up, and what do you know – there’s Android Planet.
And just like I thought, the box isn’t wide enough to fit a book.
AP was wedged inside until it fit. It now has a permanent S-curve shape to it and it won’t lie flat on a table.
I hope Lulu’s return policy is a good as they say on the website, because this is unacceptable.
Why would they even use boxes that aren’t wide enough for a book? They used to use those great flat packs that could easily fit a few books in them. Must be a money saving measure. Not this time.[/quote]Just curious, but did you use a discount code to order it? Every time I’ve used one, the books come in cheap packaging (in my cases, bubble envelopes too big for the books.)
As an experiment, when I ordered AP, I bit the bullet and paid full price. It showed in the traditional Lulu box with the book shrink-wrapped to the cardboard inside (as they ALWAYS used to do.)
Tex
(again, just curious)I’ve always been impressed with the way Lulu packages books. I remember thinking they were better than Amazon in that regard. Sorry to hear that isn’t a universal experience.
I’ve used a discount code every time… and my books always arrive in a long cardboard box. No shrink wrap but in perfect, MINT condition. I have no complaints at all tbh.
[b]Tex wrote:[/b][quote]
Just curious, but did you use a discount code to order it? Every time I’ve used one, the books come in cheap packaging (in my cases, bubble envelopes too big for the books.)As an experiment, when I ordered AP, I bit the bullet and paid full price. It showed in the traditional Lulu box with the book shrink-wrapped to the cardboard inside (as they ALWAYS used to do.)
Tex
(again, just curious)[/quote]
IIRC, I’ve used a discount code for all but one of the orders, and they all arrived in those fantastic flat boxes with the books shrink-wrapped to cardboard inside.
Maybe it was because the other orders were for 2 copies at a time?
I only ordered one CtC and it arrived ok, but now I can’t remember how it was shipped.Wow Mateo! I had no idea you had to make so many alterations just to keep the characters (and even the eagles) in line with the format of the show.
I like Rankine’s fast-paced writing style and am enjoying his occasional intended humor.
You and Mr. Mason did an amazing job! I’m unable to detect anything that would seem like a break in the author’s writing style.
Just wanted to report that I received a copy of Shepherd Moon from Lulu this week, and it was packaged quite well–wrapped in a styrofoam sheet, shrink-wrapped to cardboard, packed in a 8″x12″ box. Looks perfect! Sorry to hear others have been having trouble with Lulu; hopefully it is only an anomaly.
…me too, got my copy today, shrink wrapped as described, discount code and all. Love the cover! Hopefully Lulu can rectify the situation?
[b]edit[/b]: Wow. I read my post later. My apologies – terrible grammar and lack of anything resembling a sentence made that post nearly incomprehensible. 😛
Translation: I got my copy of Android Planet today. It was perfectly packaged for shipping as Mooncadet described. No problems here! I hope Lulu can make it right with Tex for shipping his book in such a poor fashion.
[b]mateo wrote:[/b]
[quote]But if you send them to us, we will do our best to fix them for future printings (meaning: we fix them, then upload the new version of the manuscript to Lulu, and immediately any new books printed are fixed!).
Send ’em! We’ve only received one email with a few typos noticed—in Omega![/quote]
It’s wonderful that POD makes this possible, but it makes a part of me want to hold back a bit when a new book comes out so others can “beta test” (i.e.: proofread) it, so that *my* copy will be perfect. 🙂
However, I’ll try to quell such selfish impulses and join the Alphan Proofreading Brigade on all future novels. 🙂
I finally got around to asking Lulu about their return policy last week, and they were incredibly quick to respond and totally took care of things. I just had to send them a couple of pictures to show the problems – the curvature of the book, and a large chip in the cover on the back of the book. As soon as they saw those, they apologized and shipped off a new copy of Android Planet which I received today.
And it showed up packaged extremely well – in a styrofoam sleeve shrink wrapped to cardboard and sent in those great flat boxes that I’ve gotten all my other Lulu books in. Fantastic all around and I gave back great feedback for their response.The interesting thing is that now I have a copy of AP that has the newer ITV logo on the back, whereas the first copy has the old ITV logo. Guess I’ll have to keep them both!
and this new ITV logo reminds me of the star child from 2001 for some reason. which is kind of cool considering 1999 is a child of 2001 to some extent
Finally got around to buying & reading [i]Android Planet [/i](I was planning to wait and order it the same time as [i]Phoenix of Megaron [/i]to save some shipping costs, but finally bit the bullet and ordered around the beginning of December.)
It was a pleasant read. There was nothing that jumped out as being rewritten, so I salute you for a job well done in making the changes mesh perfectly with the pre-existing text.
The typos were a bit out of control, however. I marked a good dozen in the first half of the book. The second half was considerably cleaner, with only a single typo catching my eye.
I have to say again that the font used is far too small and not at all reader-friendly. Serif fonts are a lot easier to read, at least for me. I understand you’re aiming for a consistent look to your releases, but please PLEASE consider a different, bigger font for future titles.([i]Eternity Unbound [/i]is a far more pleasant reading experience because of the choice of font.) My ideal preference would be for e-book versions, which would allow me to make the text as large and serif-y as I want, but as that’s not in the cards, the next best alternative would be to acknowledge that some of your readers are on the wrong side of 50, and take pity on us with a bigger, easier-reading font.
I’ve seriously considered OCR-ing the books and making e-books out of them for my own use. I want to read them, but don’t want to have to lay a magnifying glass across the pages…
Despite having Android Planet on my shelf for well over a year now, it took the release of Phoenix of Megaron to finally kick me into gear to read the updated novel.
What I did with Android Planet, and will do with PoM as well, was to read through it side by side with a copy of the original. That way I could quickly see any subtle, or large, changes that came about.
And there were many! Lots and lots of tiny little mods, cleaning up excess commas, hyphenating or italicizing words, changing some pronouns to names to clarify events, etc., etc. Overall a ton of detail work, and all carried out well.
The changed bit that stood out the most (as Mateo pointed out earlier), was the taming down of Paul’s actions towards Sandra. These items were unbelievable! Berating her, threatening to kick her in the ribs, licking her neck, etc. Crazy stuff. And there were also the nice tweaks or inserts to smooth things over – getting the Eagle out of the lichen, characters looking at their commlocks instead of time discs, stun guns not freezing bodies in place, Sandra not using contractions (except in one paragraph still), stuff like that. Great job with these!
And I also found changes that I thought were made by Powys, but were actually changes made between the Futura/Orbit edition and the Pocket Books edition. From tiny things like correcting the misspellings of ‘millennia’, removing the description of Helena’s hair as ‘elastic’, to larger things like censoring a slightly sexual scene between Menos and Rama, or the changing of the last line of the book where Helena and Koenig kiss. I always thought the US editions were direct copies of the UK originals because they retained the British spellings, but changed lines like these have been found in many of the books now. Interesting stuff.
On to Phoenix!
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