I have used lulu for several years now. Of late they have had an appalling stretch of dreadful customer service. They have a users' forum which is pretty much left alone by lulu and has some interesting threads on it. I have decided to slowly move away from lulu. This will take some time, and there will still be things I want to do through them. Yes, there are 'vanity publishers' on there. If I tell you I have ordered some 1000 copies of my own books, 1000 on behalf of a mining trust, and used them for our club journal without too much trouble, you can see that I have made reasonably good use of them.