Those of you who follow our blog know that we are trying to improve our customer service, and that we are making a concentrated effort to get your feedback on some of our upcoming initiatives. With both of these things in mind, this week’s Lulu Lens is focused on the idea of a Customer Service Portal (CSP). Our goal is straightforward - provide an on-demand window into the live status of your support cases.

Using the CSP, you would have easy access to your support cases and the notes our customer service team has added to them. We would also work to build a knowledge base of Lulu generated articles to help you resolve issues you run into and encourage users to create their own articles describing their solutions. We want to hear from you: How valuable would a CSP be for you?

 

To celebrate our  independence back in 1776, this July 4th weekend only,  Lulu is offering $17 off all U.S.$ orders of $76 or more.

Just enter promo code: ‘1776‘ during checkout.

From all of us a Lulu, have a safe and fun July 4th weekend.

-Adam

 

We’ve been soliciting your feedback via the forums, and now using the Lulu Lens on the blog, post for a couple of weeks now, and we want to keep hearing what you have to say. This week, we’re focusing on online photos. At this point, most of us have digital photos up on sites like Facebook, Flickr, Imageshack, and Photobucket, but often they just sit on those sites. Our friends can see them, but it’s harder to show them off offline.

Lulu wants to help you do more with your online photos, and we want your feedback on how you would like us to help you do that. We already have some options for you like photo ingestion from Facebook, Flickr and Photobucket for our photobooks or minibooks. We’re also considering helping you put your photos into the date cells on a calendar so you can have a photo of your best friend appear on the date of their birthday.

What ideas do you have? What products or options can we provide you with to help you make the most out of your online photos?

 

Mini Books come in two sizes, Compact (5.25″ x 3.5″) and Wallet (3.75″ x 2.5″). Just imagine the possibilities with books this small. Vacationing somewhere but don’t want to appear as a tourist? Not a problem when your travel guide is a Compact Mini Book! Need a day planner to keep track of your appointments? The Wallet size mini book is perfect! Need to send Grandma photos from your Summer Vacation? Mini Book it!

Be sure to take part in the contest and create your own Mini Book, too. It’s almost too easy: go to www.lulu.com, provide the email address associated with your account, create an amazingly inventive Mini Book, and be sure to set your new Mini Book to public access (or it can’t be entered). That’s it!

Lulu’s panel of Mini Book judges (the books are mini — not the judges!) will then select the top 10 most creative and post them to the Lulu.com Mini Book contest page for anyone in the Lulu Community (the author, their friends, family, colleagues — anyone in the world) to vote on. Voting will be open August 4 - August 18, 2009. First place wins $500, second place, $250 and third prize, $125.

Here is our Mini Book video to help inspire you!

This may sound a little strange, but when I was asked to create a short little video about our sweet new Mini Books, I immediately thought of the magical powers these little books have. Which is where Lu the Fairy came in. If you watch the video, I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.

I hope you have as much fun watching this video as we had making it.

 

Last week we decided to try something new, and actively talk to our users about what we’re discussing internally. To get your feedback I posted to the forums and asked, “What would you like to see more of  in the Lulu Community?” We’ve received some great responses so far, and I encourage everyone to continue participating. This gave us the great idea of having a weekly post called the Lulu Lens which asks you for your opinion on a specific topic. Of course, we won’t be able to do everything, but we will be listening to you more and taking your feedback into account.

Each week, we will be posting a new topic, and looking for your feedback so we can gather data and make decisions based on what you have to say.

This week, we want to know: What trim size not currently available on the site would you like to see us offer?

Our Current Trim Sizes

Let us know!

 

Simply enter LULUBLOG10 when you checkout and save 10% on your order (pre-shipping).

Visit the Lulu Book Marketplace and get shopping.

 

Lulu’s business is growing at a rapid rate. Self-publishing is no longer a novelty and more of you are interested in connecting with someone at Lulu to better understand our business, our site and our policies. Unfortunately the support and services team has not implemented measures quickly enough to meet this demand. We are working to accommodate this growth, and have already taken steps towards rectifying the situation.

In order to better serve you, we are implementing several efforts to improve the customer experience:

· Staffing
We have analyzed our growth data in order to effectively scale our team to support the demands of the Lulu customer base. Lulu is actively seeking the talent that is necessary to support you.

· Customer Relationship Management

We are implementing a new CRM system that will allow us to view our customers at a glance. This will enable us to learn more about each of our customers and allow us to tailor our support based on your needs.

· Customer Messaging

We are in the process of creating a page on our site that will provide you with your rights as a customer of Lulu. This page will be provided by the support and services team to include information about our support policies, order policies, shipping methods and times as well as up-to-date notices about volume and response times.

· Top 10 List and Support Knowledgebase

We are creating a page within Help that will provide you with an up-to-date list of our top 10 inquiries in Customer Support and the resolutions for them. We do realize that this may not help every customer but it will address many of the most frequently asked questions. We are also creating new tutorials to help you navigate the Lulu site and assist with the creation of your projects. Please let us know what you would like to see from us by commenting to this post.

· Feedback-Based Decisions

We value your feedback and realize that, without it, we cannot improve. We have implemented a process that allows us to take your feedback and use it to structure plans for improvement. Please continue to provide honest feedback so that we may continue to evolve into the support organization that you need us to be.

We believe that all of the above will help Lulu’s Customer Support and Services to serve you quickly and accurately. This is an ongoing project, and we will continue to look for new ways to improve your experience with Lulu. We appreciate your business and your patience and apologize for the difficulties you have encountered up to this point. Here’s to the future!

 

The Lulu help section is a perfect place for any aspiring author to start before getting ready to tackle the publishing process.

Click Here to Go To Lulu Help.

 

1. Irene Zingg
2. Timothy Chou
3. Farzin Mojtabai
4. Jason Carpenter
5. James Danko
6. Chris Juergensen
7. Damian Vraniak
8. Eve Schillo
9. Christopher Stets
10. Barbara Blanks

June Contest Standings: Updated as of 06/25/09
Just another update as there was some noteworthy late movement taking place in the top 3.

1. Timothy Chou
2. Farzin Mojtabai
3. Jason Carpenter
4. Chris Juergensen
5. James Danko
6. Christopher Stets
7. Eve Schillo
8. Barbara Blanks
9. Robert Kaneko
10. Damian Vraniak

June Contest Standings: Updated as of 06/24/09
Here’s a look at the top-selling authors as of June 24th, 2009. As we near the finish to the June author sales contest it is still anyone’s game. Historically, we’ve seen some of the largest shifts near the end of these contests, so now is the time to get out there and clinch your victory.

1. Farzin Mojtabai
2. Jason Carpenter
3. Timothy Chou
4. Chris Juergensen
5. James Danko
6. Christopher Stets
7. Eve Schillo
8. Barbara Blanks
9. Robert Kaneko
10. Damian Vraniak

June Contest Standings: Updated as of 06/19/09

Here’s a look at the top-selling authors as of June 19th, 2009. We’ll be updating the standings regularly before the winners are officially announced on July 15th. Be sure to keep checking back!

1. Farzin Mojtabai
2. Jason Carpenter
3. Timothy Chou
4. Chris Juergensen
5. James Danko
6. Christopher Stets
7. Eve Schillo
8. Barbara Blanks
9. Robert Kaneko
10. Damian Vraniak

There is still plenty of time to enter and stake your claim to $2,750 in prize money. Remember, we’re offering a $1,500 cash 1st place prize, a $750 cash 2nd place prize and a $500 cash 3rd place prize for this month’s top-selling authors.

Regards,

-Adam

———————————————————————–

With May’s Author Sales Contest coming to a close in a couple of days, it’s about time we start posting details on our upcoming June contest. Since these past few months of hosting sales contests have been so successful, we figured, why mess up a good thing? So, after the winners for May’s contest are confirmed, we’ll reset the counters back to zero and start off fresh.

June’s Author Sales Contest will begin on the first of the month and the rules are pretty much the same;  who ever earns the highest number of sales for their content on Lulu throughout June, wins. The three highest selling authors will receive $500, $750 and $1,500 respectively, with the top three titles (and a few honorable mentions) highlighted on the site and Lulu newsletter. To sweeten the deal even further, our June first place winner will also be treated to an exclusive interview posted prominently here, in our very own Lulu blog.

To enter the contest you must register through the entry form on the Author Sales Contest page.  Registration is open now through the end of May.  For more information head on over to the contest page and sign up.

Early standing will be posted approximately 1 week after the start of the contest with updates posted regularly thereafter. Click here to see last months winners.

Good luck everyone!

-Adam

 

Poet Nikhil Parekh

Hi, Nikhil. Thank you for agreeing to do this interview with me for the Lulu blog. Can you introduce yourself to our readers?

My name is Nikhil Parekh. I am a Love Poet & Five-Time World Record Holder with the Limca Book of Records India (Only 2nd in official world rankings to the Guinness Book of World Records) for my Poetry. I am located on planet earth as is everyone around me by God’s grace. But pragmatically speaking I live in Ahmedabad, a royally sweltering city of India. To know more about me, my poetry, poetry books, awards and works please visit me online at www.nikhilparekh.org or www.nikhilparekh.com

So, to begin with, I would love to know how it all started.

Wrote my first poem at age 12 yrs or so. That was about a ‘dog’ whom I perceived as a peaceful friend. Penned a few sprinkling of poems during this time. After that didn’t write till age 21 yrs. But after completing college and my Civil Engineering studies I have been writing in my mortal capacity since last 9.5 yrs or so. The ramification of which has rendered over 7000 pages of my Poetry on God, Love, World Peace, Womb,  Anti Terror, Environment, Life, Death, Lovers, Love, Unity, Brotherhood, Humanity.

What drew you to poetry?

God is the greatest Poet and his enchanting Universe the greatest poetry. If we look around us there’s poetry of the most unassailably majestic forum unveiling by the grace of God. That is my ultimate inspiration. Human beings are fickle in attitude; they might inspire one instant; the other moment they’d baselessly ostracize. Therefore the entire credit of my writing and poetry goes to the Creator and his undefeated Universe. I write poetry which is uninhibited and replete with analogies to deliver a strong message for the betterment of all living kind.

What are your poems about? Do you have any running themes?

I write poetry spontaneously. Whenever a thought strikes me; it might be at any hour; but if I feel the magnetic impulse to write, I’ll do it. Therefore there’s no running theme. Its unabashedly natural. I’ve written thousands of poems on Anti Terror, Environment, Global Warming, Adopting Girl Child, Children, Friendship, Love, Peace- at times evoked by what was happening around me; at times when things seemed all peaceful and mellifluous; but because my fantasy/perception took me there. So its all absolutely natural. That’s the way I am. I don’t set myself tasks; because then that’s not poetry. That’s monotony and robotic work. But whatever comes my way in its most uninhibitedly vivacious form; I set upon to do with the romantic winds of existence tingling my stride. Another thing; before I set to type a poem on my laptop; its already there; every bit of it in my mind evolved as it should be written. My hands then become my quintessential tools to pen the rhapsody of unblemished thought down.

Has poetry changed your life in any way?

Only God can change things and govern the planet as he likes. All of us humans and living beings; irrespective of caste; creed; religion and color are nothing infront of the Lord Almighty.  So Poetry hasn’t changed my life; but because I was destined to write Poetry by his grace; it has given me my direction to live. It has revitalized my beleaguered persona to triumph with the spirit of love. It has perpetuated my existence with the freshness of truth- as blazing as the rays of the invincible Sun.

There is a poem of mine “Writing Poetry” and what it means to me. I’d like to share this with all my readers. The same can be read online. (This describes in all its unflinching profoundness and answers your question)

Have you visited Lulu’s new Poetry site, Lulu Poetry www.poetry.com? From a poet’s perspective, what do you think of the site?

Poetry.com is a revolution for poets across the world. I was stupendously enthralled witnessing it now under Lulu helm. The most popular domain for Poetry and Poetry’s largest website on the internet is truly amazing to view. This website has so many resources, contests, patronizations, feedback for poets that its almost a one-stop destination for poets globally. Being online it unites poets from across the globe into a religion of friendship and provides them an efficacious platform for their works. Though I couldn’t find a section for poets from India (India isn’t listed in countries when you submit for the contest) at the website. Am sure it’d be introduced soon. As time unveils, I feel Poetry.com would be the internet’s most royal answer for poetry. I for one look forward to this internet Poetry giant to unveil itself in its entirety.

Nikhil Parekh, 31 yrs, from Ahmedabad, India– is a Love Poet and Five-time World Record holder with the Limca Book of Records India (Only 2nd in Official World Rankings to Guinness Book of World Records) for his poetry.

These 5 world records held by Parekh with the Limca Book of Records are for:-

• “Being the 1st Indian Poet to be published/featured in McGill English Dictionary of Rhyme which is the World’s Number 1 English Rhyming Dictionary—for his poem: Come Lets Embrace our New Religion”
• “Being the 1st Indian Poet to have won Poet of the Year Award at the Canadian Federation of Poets which is Canada’s National Poetry Body endorsed by Governor General of Canada”
• “Being the 1st Indian Poet to be published in a Commonwealth Newsletter for his poem on AIDS which is ‘Aids doesn’t kill. Your Attitude kills.”
• “Being the 1st Indian Poet to win an EPPIE award for best poetry e-book”
• “Writing the most number of letters to and receiving the most number of replies from World Leaders and World Organizations”.

A complete compilation of his poems, poetry books, world records in poetry, projects, awards and works can be browsed online at www.nikhilparekh.org or www.nikhilparekh.com.

Visit Nikhil Parekh’s Lulu storefront.