ADV 400 Research Paper

1. Social Media Project: Lulu

2. History Social media outlet Lulu was founded in 2002 by current CEO Bob Young. With their headquarters located in Raleigh, North Carolina Lulu operates both nationally and internationally to U.K., French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch customers

3. What is Lulu? The idea of Lulu is open publishing, according to their website Lulu was created so that it “empowers more creators to sell more content to more readers [for] more profitably than ever before.” Offers products such as hardcover and paperback books, eBooks, mini books, photo books, calendars, cookbooks, travel books, CDs, and DVDs.

4. Who uses Lulu? Lulu’s users range from the young and the old, students of all ages and grades to older generations writing memoirs and to companies (large and small).

5. What does Lulu offer? Upon visiting Lulu’s website you can find under their services tab that they provide three different types of services, Pre-Publishing packages, Marketing Packages, as well as Distribution Packages

6. Problems encountered Through blogs everalcomplaints of hidden fees, misinformed, unresponsive and unreachable customer service, as well as poorly produced products were found. However, something interesting is that on many blogs to which people have responded with their own individual complaints there have also been responses from Lulu representatives expressing their apologies explaining the reasons for fees and providing contact information and ensuring that their teams would work with them until they were satisfied.

7. Problems Foreseen? Lulu ensures, due to its wide range of users, that content available on its site is appropriate as well as legal, meaning that there are no infringements on copyrights. According to the Lulu website there are over 1.1 million users and over 20,000 titles published per month, I imagine if more users were to use this site, more problems such as those stated before would occur causing issues and fraud accusations

8. My Opinions… The programs via Lulu to create books and what not seem almost fool proof. They take you step by step instructing you what do and also provide free tutorials on their website However, I am a poor college and did not go all the way through to purchase a product and see the results

9. Room for improvement Customer Service -majority customers are unsatisfied because of the unavailability of customer service Clearly list fees - Lulu markets itself as a free publisher, however there are many fees in which one will encounter if they actually want to get their book out there via Lulu

10. Bibliography http://www.newraleigh.com/articles/archive/lulu-rising/ (slide 1) http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/opinion/blogpost/7519260/ (slide 1) Photobucket.com (slides 3-5)