Lulu Book Unboxing: Is Spiral Binding Any Good?

About this video

Roberts unboxes a Lulu spiral-bound notebook — a lined journal titled for writing drunk and editing sober — sent by John Wasser, and judges it on quality, delivery time, shipping and handling, and cost/profit, not the content. He praises Lulu for shipping it in a corrugated cardboard box, an improvement over the bubble-wrap envelopes he had criticized before, and likes the glossy cover, which he compares in feel to IngramSpark glossy covers and notes does not pick up fingerprints. The interior is, he says, 60-pound paper, but print-heavy pages felt slightly flimsy and wavy, a saturation issue he has seen before, so he advises ordering a proof for image-heavy books. He says delivery in the heat of Q4 in December was fast once printed. On economics, Roberts reports the wholesale cost was $5.66, Wasser priced it at $6.99 for a $1.06 profit, and shipping added $3.99 plus tax. He stresses spiral binding costs far more than Lulu’s perfect-bound paperback, cannot be distributed off Lulu’s platform, and suggests selling through Lulu or its Shopify/Lulu Xpress route or ordering small stock for events.

Key takeaways

• Roberts reports the spiral notebook’s wholesale cost was $5.66 versus about $2.56 for Lulu’s perfect-bound paperback — a roughly $3 difference that cuts into margins.
• At a $6.99 price, Roberts says the profit was $1.06, with $3.99 shipping plus tax bringing what he paid to about $7.40 in total.
• Quality notes: glossy cover resists fingerprints, but the 60-pound paper felt flimsy and wavy on print-heavy pages, so order a proof before an image-heavy spiral book.
• The spiral binding lays flat for note-taking, unlike paperbacks that must be forced open, but spiral titles can only be fulfilled through Lulu — there is no off-platform distribution.
• To keep more royalties, Roberts suggests driving traffic to Lulu directly or using the Lulu Xpress/Shopify option, or ordering 10 to 20 copies as stock for events and bundles.

Episode details: published April 13, 2019 · 10:56 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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