I recently received some copies of my new novel Null_Pointer from the publisher,Lulu.com. As always, they look fantastic. The fit and finish of the Lulu press is spot on. In order to test the quality control of the distributor, I also ordered the book from Barnes and Noble’s web site. The B&N book arrived in less than a week, which I thought was pretty darn fast. I ordered it on 28 August and it arrived on 3 September.
Knowing that the two sets of books were printed by different presses, I naturally compared the two. Over all, they are both of excellent quality. To the eye of the average consumer, there is no difference. But to my practiced eyes I can see two differences. The first is on the spine of the book. The Lulu press book has the spine text aligned in the exact center and the B&N book has that text and logo slightly bottom weighted. The other difference is in the amount of detail that is visible in the background binary code on the front cover. The Lulu book has less detail in the whitish areas and on the B&N book the same area has more visible code definition. Again, these things are incredibly minor and only a critical eye will notice them.
Different POD presses will obviously have slight variations as no two presses are the same. When you order the book from Lulu.com you get it printed on their press. When you order the book from any other seller, you get the distributor’s press which is somewhere in Tennessee. This should in no way influence where you buy the book. Both presses have produced a beautiful book which will be enjoyed for years to come.
These minor variations are just me being nerdy about how my finished product looks. The book has also been ordered from Amazon.com and it looks the same as the B&N version. Again, only my critical eye will notice these differences so don’t let this influence where you buy the book. The book ordered from Amazon arrived in four days. Which is also very speedy.
If you have ordered a print version of Null_Pointer from your favorite retailer, let me know how fast you got it and how good you think it looks. Overall, I think Null_Pointer is a pretty awesome looking POD book.