As part of the spotlight, could Lulu allow a listing of all book titles, perhaps under the author profile. The listing would be in any order the author or publisher prefers, thus allowing books to be listed under the name of a series. Along with each book title would be links to print, pdf, or ePub--whatever format(s) the book is available in. That way, the customer can scan the list of titles, then click on a series title or book title and the relevant book(s) would appear in the spotlight. That would keep customers from having to keep on clicking on page after page for those authors or publishers who have many books for sale. Right now, the spotlight is good for authors who have very few books for sale, but bad for authors/publishers who have many books for sale.

David Bruce

The old Storefront page was so clear and simple - one cover picture per book title with print or download options to click on. The new Spotlight page is terrible, especially if you have more than one book for sale. I have thirteen book titles, and now that they are available as print, EPUB and EPDF, instead of having one page with my different titles clearly shown with their different formats on one page, I now have five pages, with the different formats of my books spread out all over the place. My Spotlight page is totally confusing, and if I were a customer thinking of buying one of my books, I think I'd give up just trying to sort through all the mess. Lulu will sell fewer books unless they simplify the Spotlight page, and make the format like the old Storefront page which worked perfectly. Why should something that worked be changed into something that doesn't? That's not progress.

Following David Woodward, I post this suggestion also here. It was posted in an other discussion and had 5 kudos there.

- It should be possible to ad more and different fields in the columns left and right of the book section; not only one picture, one film, some links and the profile:

-- more then one text fields (free text)

-- include titles from a RSS feed

-- a counter (maybe also for each book)

shown in red in the picture

Please make it possible to for us sort the books on display in our new Author's Spotlight book store individually.

I have many books, of different importance in my eyes, and I want to sort them as I see fit, as I did before in the Storefront model.

Thanks!

I would like to arrange the 26 book titles as I like them, as we could before

On the new spotlight page, can I have an option to exclude any object? I have multiple print books, with download versions of each -- so the page lists two of everything. That has the effect of listing only three books per page!

This seems unnecessary, since if a customer clicks any of the books they will go to the book profile which gives them the option of buying the print or download versions... I'd like to feature my print books and exclude the download versions so that I can feature more books per page on the storefront.

I'd also want the option to list all of my books per page rather than having multiple pages.

PLUS, with nineteen books or so, I'd like the option of having two or more spotlight pages so that I can seperate my offerings in different "series" -- naming the pages by author and series. If Authors with one book are entitled to a spotlight page, we who publish multiple titles should be entitled to a storefront page per every 3 books? 5 books?

Right now my offerings are listed a little randomly by the computer's unintelligent criteria...

J. Scott Husted

I'm sure this has come up before now, but I'd like to search and download free ebooks, but I could not seem to find a search or sort option for this. I will gladly take the direction if you point it out to me. Also, I am interested in the new voice and am totally open minded and willing to give the new author some of my time by reading the work they have taken the time to upload. I am hoping that a new author will be interested in my opinion and review, and I do not want to feel like I am wasting my amateur review on an established author who will not read it anyway. I am probably not looking hard enough but this is an idea.

When ordering multiple books. It would be nice if lulu could ship to more than one address. I need to order 10 books, and these books need to be sent to five different locations across the U.S. I could use the free shipping coupon that is available right now, but that wont end up saving me money in the long run since I will then have to pay for shipping myself to get these books to their intended destinations. If there was an option of sending these books directly from lulu to the recipient, rather than having myself (the creator of the book) be the 'middle-man' that would save time and money.

Can we have an email link on our author spotlight page, and also more youtube videos.  The current video option to embed is too small and not really worth bothering with at present.

What, all new and already complaints??

Well, with the old storefront it was possible to work out the layout individually, using html etc.

Now we can't do this anymore, autsch, but that's not even why i write this here, there is

ONE ADDITIONAL CONTENTS BLOCK MISSING

I would call it:

Additional notes, or

Extra Information about this book, or

Attention please, or

Please note

etc., i think you get the idea?

On my own profile (the old one) i had a 2 column table in which i could nicely add some valuable information to any possible buyer about the books contents and how it was written or any other brief important messages they should know before they buy - now, without such an extra box in the new Spotlight thing, i had to OUTSOURCE that extra info and put it on a special page on my blog, not ideal.

I would like to see my spotlight improved by adding to the drop down menu "Search" by Publication Date...relevance.  Because I have more than a few books, I want to see book type  in the search drop down for people to access my subjects easily. 

For instance, I wrote a few topics on winter for kids and I would like to group these together if possible.  I can't do this now.  People have to move through page after page to get to the various subjects or book  topics.  This is supposed to be accessible and easy for them.  It should be a pleasant experience, not a frustration course in locating a book.

Another way is to put group types in search option drop down menu.  I have so many that it would be great to make it easier for me and for people who view the spotlight to find what  they want. 

Hardcovers, 

Paperbacks,

E-books,

I've had this happen with other POD firms as well -- it starts out being a good relationship, I sell a decent number of books, and then my experience gets slowly and progressively ground down by "improvements" unilaterally rolled out for no logical reason whatsoever.

I have a large number of books, and I want the ability to sort them so that they appear on the page in the order I think is best. I also routinely publish print and PDF versions of the same book, and I have no need to list these separately. My old Store was perhaps a little clunky to update and edit, but I had the tools I needed to make it look the way I thought was best. This new "Author's Spotlight" has less functionality than the old Store did. What had been a good service by Lulu has been replaced with a bad one.

Why can I have hundreds of font and color options for my books' spines, and only six options for the "Author's Spotlight" layout, all of which look like something out of Geocities circa 1999?

Why can't I sort my books in the way that I choose?

And why can't I display more than five titles per page? (OK, ten, but Lulu's decision to list PDFs and books separately basically means that only five unique titles per page get listed.) My customers aren't going to click through a dozen pages of listings. This is hurting my sales and Lulu's own revenue.

I've sold books through Lulu since 2008 and had no complaints at all before. Now, after this mistake on their part, I'm seriously reconsidering my relationship with Lulu.com. I want the old functionality of the Author's Store back, and I'm not going to wait forever.

Don't know if this has been mentioned before, but it would be great to be able to print on the back cover of the calendars. It's a great place for seller info for the buyer. Other places do it, why not Lulu?

Steve

Other competing sites have code generators that allow a discount code to be created on a per book/project basis.

I wish Lulu did this too. I'd like to do special promotions to give extra discounts over a weekend or other period of time. It would also be great to hand out special codes for discounts to family and friends.

Come on Lulu, users must have been wanting this for years.

Pleeeeesssseeee.

First, let me say that I think the new storefront is very nice.

I do feel that some improvements may be necessary. Currently books are displayed in two columns. Because of the information included on my storefront there are large gaps in the columns. I have set up seven items, available as both printed copy and PDF download. Instead of these items appearing next to each other, the space allocated for each item forces a space to be skipped. This ends up with hard copy and dowload of the same item to appear on different lines and the creation of a second screen to view the remaining items.

I would like to suggest that a future release of the storefront should allow for more options for layout that would include both a choice for the number of columns and perhaps a layout for a single column listing.

I would really like to see a hit cointer or some sort of analysis in the Author's spotlight so that I can judge how many people have viewed my page

I have just written an eBook about Audience Development for the Arts, and I was shocked to find that Lulu does not give us an opportunity to follow up with the purchasers of our books.  In a time where we need to get to know our customers and supporters, I hope in the future Lulu will add a way that we can at least email our customers with a follow up thank you message.

Additional options could be ways that they can connect with us via social media too (unless I missed this opportunity somewhere). 

We need to be able to form relationships with our customers so if we write additional books, we have a way to communicate with them. 

I recently published a short book through Lulu, a 120-page paperback collection of essays to share with friends and family mostly, or whoever else would be interested. Because I realize not everyone is willing to spend $15 on a book written by amateur writer, I decided to place the book up as a free PDF and free eBook download. Since both are free, I cannot see how many copies have been downloaded on the 'My Revenue' page because they do not pass through the Shopping Cart Checkout. 

I would love to be able to know how many digital copies of my book have been downloaded for free, so if there was a way to track free digital downloads, I think it would be a great asset!

Thanks!