Lightning Source reviews and complaints

I couldn't login with my usual credentials so I changed my password and when I did I was advised that it could take 24 to 48 hours to take effect.

It has been 4 days and I STILL cannot login!

In addition, I was advised that every check sent to me would incur an expense of $25! I find this extortionate!

All I want to do is to change my banking details, so that they don't have to send me a written check!

WHY CAN'T I LOG IN?

I have not received any payments for the last quarter ON TWO BOOKS!

WHY?

LightningSource give the crappiest customer service I have ever come across. Recently, I had a family illness so was sent an invoice and put it in my tray for TWO WEEKS. I didn't get any warnings or anything like that -- bearing in mind this was just TWO WEEKS. They just froze my account so noone could buy the books on Amazon and sent me a letter telling me what they'd done! TWO WEEKS! Most companies give at least 30 days to pay invoices before they even think about sending reminder letter. Even then, they send POLITE and FRIENDLY reminder letters. Insane way to treat your loyal customers. Go IngramSpark!

I recently received a horribly printed book from LSI's Fresno facility. I called LSI Customer Service, but after 30 minute hold there was no pickup on their end. So, I called the main number and was told I must work through CS. I asked the receptionist to connect me with someone in CS directly or in Management or in Quality Control. She would not do this. Eventually, sensing my ire, she said she would call CS and have them phone me directly. They did not call me. Nor have they responded to the email I sent to CS several days ago after the failed phone contacts. I know I just a "plain ole reader" and this is just a one-off situation, but, based on what I see, they care not about the customer nor about quality. I know that the online book store from whom I ordered who represents some publisher who, in turn, contracted with LSI are not directly at fault except for their involvement with this possibly incompetent and uncaring print service. Cast thy eyes on some pictures attached of my "book"

Terrible, awful customer service! 20+ years with Lightning Source and over 120 titles later, we now feel compelled to warn other authors and publishers that L S UK (in particular) - as well as LS USA in Tennessee it seems, have abandoned any and all sincere efforts at proper customer service. At one time you could call or email your Account Rep. No longer. Now it is voicemail, "Because everyone is in a meeting" or "The Team" will get back to you in due course. Which mostly, they do not! When one eventually gets through to someone (we had to contact their Legal Dept in the USA to simply get someone at LS UK to respond to us) only then to be served up a string of vacuous, unhelpful and utterly useless 'directions' that did NOT deal with the issue at hand. In this particular case, all we were trying to do was upload a new text interior PDF file (with a couple of typo corrections) for an existing book. Two months and several attempted 'communications' with variously non-responsive, inept, poorly-trained and/or disinterested-and-condescending supposed 'customer service staff'... this simple task (which used to be easy via the website) still hasn't been done! In utter frustration and exasperation at the lack of competent or timely responses, and in an email headed, "What on Earth is going on at LS?" ..we finally asked for instructions as to how to remove 2/3 of our titles from their database, and who we should bill for all of our wasted time? That was over a week ago and STILL, no response or acknowledgement!? Meanwhile of course, they continue to draw funds from our account for purported 'catalogue fees' and, despite us having signed contracts, LS has unilaterally changed the standard requirements for printing and distribution at the behest of the Big Boys (Amazon et al) so as to effectively deny small publishers access to their contracted services unless we pay ever-higher fees and surrender up-front discounts on our titles beginning at a minimum of 40% per title, and even suggesting that up to 65% will better help sales. (It used to be 25%). In short, Lightning Source UK and USA - a subsidiary of Ingrams - appears to have gone the way of all corporate entities who invest in the 'savage capitalism' model that prioritises profiteering over customer service. In fact, it appears that it is a deliberate policy decision (just like so many other corporate behemoths) to maintain a deceptive PRETENCE of customer service so as to secure your initial confidence and trust, only then to give you the eternal (anonymous) runaround once they have your titles and fees 'in the bank'. Because where's the profit in dealing one-on-one with LS-created customer service problems, when they can just redirect pesky enquirers into a never-ending cycle of automated generic responses? My respectful suggestion to anyone who is considering partnering with Lightning Source in face of all of these negative reviews, is DON'T! They were a decent operation at one point. But no longer. Put simply, they are NOT fulfilling their contractual obligations to their customers and partners - and that is actionable under law. Any company that treats its partners with this level of contempt and disrespect needs to be boycotted - at least until they wise up and reassess their priorities. If however, you do decide to use them, please make sure you warn them in advance (by personal contract) that any failures or lapses in customer service that cause you stress and frustration and/or that cost you time and money WILL result in them being invoiced. THAT seems to be the only thing that concerns them these days. Dr Stephen T Manning author of "CRISIS, CULL or COUP? What, How & Who? Facts & Truths to Make You Think!"

33/100 books printed by Lightning Source Ingram (LSI) literally fell apart after opening them.

I ordered a batch of 50 of my books for a book signing event. As potential buyers paged through them, pages started falling out. After further investigation, the glue was visible and looked like a 2 year old child glued the pages together. A total of at least 25 (known) books out of 50 fell apart. There were potentially more damaged books that were sold that I am unaware of.

I reached out to my publisher and they were able to have LSI replace all 50 books. After receiving and checking them, 8 out the 50 replacement books fell apart. I informed my publisher and I’m waiting on a response from LSI. It’s unknown how many books that were sold by major retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble were defective. It’s also a great concern that a large amount of sales were lost and this will negatively impact the reviews for my book and will entail loss of royalties.

If you are capable, and would be willing to help me submit my book revision through LSI please contact me.
Mellamb70@gmail.com

Yeah as a former employee of LS Australia in Melbourne I can honestly confirm that the Quality Control is terrible. All sorts of mistakes are made and shipped out. They are at best a bunch of amateurs who for the most part are unqualified and irresponsible. They even started employing refugees with no knowledge, skills or experience in printing and were quite willing to let their best workers leave in disgust. I would highly recommend avoiding this company like the plague!

I'm a pretty seasoned designer so I know what I'm doing, I had so many issues trying to upload the interior .pdf. Their system is complex, detailed and unnecessarily stringent - actually pedantic with no real explanation. What is with the stupid 13 mm trim to safety area? It can't possibly be that inaccurate. It is double of some other POD services! Why don't they just have a freaking page template generator like they do for covers? Cover, generated, not a problem. Saves everyone time and hassle. Interior: I think I had to upload it several times before it was finally accepted. The whole process was so tedious and frustrating. Nowhere is it mentioned if your file is rejected at that stage it just logs you out soo at first you're like WTF is going on? Finally, after nearly tearing my hair out, it turned out there were two files out of several hundred that were like 298 dpi instead of 300. I went through every. single. thing. before that to save some work, or so I thought. Gets uploaded finally and then notifies me they are going to do a automated reduction of dpi because the dpi was now too high! FFS. I just hit yes because I was OVER IT by that point. Next day I get an email, my cover is rejected, for elements outside the safety area. I designed it EXACTLY AS I WANTED IT. EXACTLY. The saga continues after nearly a week. I almost regret choosing them now. The book better look good. If it doesn't I may just give them the flick and go elsewhere. Blurb are ball breakers with their pricing but everything else - so easy, no hassle, done. LightningSource has made me want to brick my screen. The comments here about print quality and customer service are scary.

I have about ten years experience with LS. Four years ago I pulled most of my titles from them and xferred to CreateSpace. CS is far superior to LS both with ease of uploading and with costs. CS is free from page one to the end. LS piles on costs and an annual $12 fee they claim is "mandatory" for retention of title, etc. Poppycock. CS charges no such fees and delivers books at a lower cost to you. In other words, your profit margins are higher at CS than at LS and your service is rapid. Always. Their support team is excellent although basically e-mail driven. There is no contest here concerning price, quality and marketing. I have sold four times more books via CS than LS.

I had numerous customers service issues because their lack of knowledge and laziness about looking into the problems to resolve the issues. I had iin uploading the files which was an A4 format
I was trying to explain that I was able to upload my A4 file successfully on create space.they claimed that LS had a different A4 standard and while some other customer service rep said that he had never heard about A4 size hence could double check the spec. As a result of series of coolant my account has been suspended. The want me to hand my entire business to author companies that will be linked to them dictating this way the model of my business. They should be all about supporting independent authors as that's what their business is based on fbu if you are not a large publishers they can damage your business affecting also the large retailers that buy books from indi companies. Watch out..you might build your business model and they can kill your bussines over out of nastiness of a few customer service. The desicion was taken by a supervisor. If a company is started closing account they can generating major financial damage especially if your company is already trading with the large bookstore. Has anybody else experiences that? On another note..is there any other company out there that partners with Gardners or Waterstones and Barnes and Nobles?

Here's a little update / thread for ya!

My email to LSI:
1). There was a ten day delay on my uploaded files. I submitted materials on the 8th, did not receive notification until the 18th. What was the delay?
2). The first price listed for 200 copies of this book were 1.86 each. Today they are 2.87 each. What happened in two weeks to double the price? I invoiced out at 1.86 now I have to eat $200 dollars?

Response: Please, contact the Client Service at [protected].

My next email: And one last thing. I specifically noted in my Instructions that I did not want a proof as well as selecting the 'No' option in the window. Why did I just get an invoice for a proof? Please see our card on file has been charge and act accordingly.

As a business owner myself, I need to know when my representatives or work is subpar. My livelihood depends on finding errors or misconceptions and fixing them. Working with LSI has become more and more difficult each year. Problems, complaints and instructions seem to be ignored. In a nutshell, you can and have, made my work subpar. Unexplained delays, unanswered emails from the production end... all of this affects my client's perception of my work.

What is the company prepared to do to address these issues? I really would like for this email to be addressed by someone (if not you) that can answer that question. Competition is too thick to be complacent, for my industry and yours.

Reponse: I forwarded your email to the management team of Client Service and they will respond to you. (Still waiting...)