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Scaling for Success with Automated Book Fulfillment Solutions

Scaling for Success with Automated Book Fulfillment Solutions

Podcast 38 min read

Publish & Prosper Episode #107
Published February 18, 2026
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Complete List of Channels


Manual fulfillment works…until it doesn’t. In this episode, Matt & Lauren break down the risks and realities of manually packing and shipping orders, signs it’s time to update your existing solutions, and the backend automations that can help you successfully scale with your growing sales.

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Complete Episode Transcript

Lauren: No, it's okay, it's fine. Because the – where we landed somewhere in the middle is that when our –

Matt: It’s fine.

Lauren: – forced retirement starts –

Matt: Like that meme with the dog. It’s fine.

Lauren: Exactly.

Matt: It's fine. It's fine. We're all fine. It's good.

Lauren: But it's fine.

Matt: We're fine.

Lauren: Everything's fine.

Matt: Everything's fine.

Lauren: And there's always churro carts at Disney.

Matt: Thankfully. I mean, that is the saving grace in everything, is that you can just go to Disney and get a churro.

Lauren: I don't know what I would – I guess, I mean, realistically ride operator.

Matt: There's a whole host of things I would do.

Lauren: Like.

Matt: Honestly. Listen, I am not kidding when I say A. I'm going to retire early.

Lauren: As you should.

Matt: And B. I am going to work part-time at a Disney park.

Lauren: Why not?

Matt: Not full time. Part time at a Disney park.

Lauren: Okay, what are your top three, like, top three things if you could do anything...

Matt: Real–Like, I always joke about churro cart. I don't know if I could do that all day though.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt:I'm not going to have the patience for that. Like, uh-uh sir, you're going to have to step away from this cart. My top ones would probably be a ride operator at one of my favorite rides, like Haunted Mansion or Pirates of the Caribbean. You know, I can be the one that helps you into your doombuggy –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – at the Haunted Mansion, or helps you out of it. My number two would probably be... I guess my number two would be like, I'd love to be a monorail operator.

Lauren: Oooh.

Matt: Like, actually operate the monorail. Like.

Lauren: I didn’t think of that.

Matt: I just think that'd be cool.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Like, I would never get tired of just going back and forth and, you know, going around the Grand Floridian and the parks and just like, you know. Be cool if I got to operate the Epcot, you know – so I think my number two would be a monorail operator. Obviously at Walt Disney World.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I don't know what my third one would be. You said top three, but I don't know what my third one would be. Those would be my top two, though.

Lauren: Wow.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Good pick.

Matt: I can't really think of anything else. I mean, I would do a lot of stuff there, but those would be my top. I do remember from when I worked in college, if you want to be a character, you typically get assigned to a group of characters based on your height and things like that.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So like, you'd probably qualify to be Captain Hook.

Lauren: Yeah, I'm too tall.

Matt: And a few others –

Lauren: I'm, I'm actually over the height limit for like, any woman.

Matt: I don’t –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: You sure?

Lauren: Yeah. I think it's five seven, is the height.

Matt: Oh, you might be right.

Lauren: I think, I'm pretty sure. I mean, it doesn't matter. I'm also too old. So that ship sailed.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But also not what I would want to do. That's – out of all the things, like that wouldn't even crack my top ten. The only – like, the closest that I would want to come to being any kind of character, performer, or anything like that would be one of the, like, filler dancers in the parades. So like, you know when there's the float –

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Lauren: – and there's like, like the, the Boo to You parade where they have the, like the gravediggers?

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And the Haunted Mansion ghosts dancing in the ballroom? Like, that I would do. Because that – you don't have to talk to anybody. You just have to dance and like, smile and wave –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – and engage with the crowd without speaking to them.

Matt: I don’t know dude.

Lauren: And that, that I would do. That's the closest that I would be willing to get to being any kind of character or performer. Other than that, for sure ride operator. 100%. And any of the rides that you can be sassy in. So Haunted Mansion, Tower of Terror, Rise of the Resistance, or Jungle Cruise.

Matt: Yeah. Oh, that's a great one. Jungle Cruise operator.

Lauren: Jungle Cruise operator.

Matt: Oh that's sick. That's actually got to be number one.

Lauren: Bucket list dream.

Matt: That's actually got to be number one.

Lauren: Right?

Matt: Yeah, I forgot about that. That would be fun, dude.

Lauren: That's like if, if I could pay, like – we will let you be the ride operator one time. You can you can do that. Like, we will put you in a costume and you can do the thing one time. I'd be like, okay, great.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Take my money. Let's go.

Matt: I forgot about that. That's a great – that's definitely top three. Should we start this episode?

Lauren: I think so.

Matt: We've put it off now for like thirty, forty-five minutes.

Lauren: It's been an hour.

Matt: Oh, there you go. I've already forgot what we're talking about. Eh. Alright. I'll just make it up as I go.

Lauren: Sounds good.

Matt: That’s how I usually operate.


[4:30] - Episode Topic Intro

Matt: Welcome back, everyone, to another exciting episode of Publish & Prosper. Today we are going to be talking about the differences between manual fulfillment, automated fulfillment, and why you should strive to push from one to the next as you scale your business. Your book business. Obviously, a topic directly tied to our last episode, where we, we tried to really break down APIs, and how our Lulu Print API works, and how that's like, the pinnacle of automation for a book business. So this episode, we thought we'd talk about another form, or other forms, of automated fulfillment as you scale. For those who aren't ready to take that step with integrating an API into your website, or having to hire a developer or, you know, figure out how to use Claude Code or something like that. Like, these are the other ways to automate. They're a little easier. A stepping stone, if you will. If you wanted to create a ladder from manual fulfillment to, you know, automated fulfillment using plugins and Lulu Direct to, you know, the ultimate of integrated APIs for total automation and personalization. So.

Lauren: Yeah, I think we spend a lot of time talking about things like, ideation for how you can use books or...

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Ways to market your books, or ways to sell your books, and all of these things. We talk a lot about the, the like, forward-facing, like, here's how to do things and how to use books to get them done.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Whether it's growing your business, building a business around it, whatever. This is an opportunity for us to talk about what happens when you are successful with those efforts. Because a lot of the things that we talk about –

Matt: Yes. Yeah.

Lauren: – are like, hey, here's a cool thing that you can do with books to help your business grow.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: And then, okay, great, you do those things and your business has grown and it has grown past the point of you being able to handle the manual operations that you had in place at that beginning stage.

Matt: Now –

Lauren: So now what do you do?

Matt: We're making a huge assumption here that you are manually fulfilling.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: And so, oftentimes what we see happening is that people get really hyped on the idea of selling direct, as you should, and they get a little bit of tech paralysis. You know, your first inclination is to take the easy route and find a way to connect directly with your, your customers. And then you're fulfilling it yourself from home. And so that's what we mean when we say manual fulfillment. We're talking about those who have thankfully taken a step forward in the direction of direct sales, but have not actually connected to an automated solution yet. Now, the flip side of that is – or not the flip side. There are authors out there – I've talked to them, you probably have too – they are selling a really good amount of books and they are still manually fulfilling.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I’m not even sure if there's a cost savings there, to be honest with you, but

Matt: for some people, maybe it's just not an inconvenience for them. But what we're talking about today is, is just what, what Lauren said that, you know, hopefully you get to a point where if you are manually fulfilling, you're selling, you know, a hundred books a day, thirty books a day, whatever. It doesn't matter. Like, if you're selling more than ten or fifteen books a day, and you're trying to fulfill those yourself, every day, it's a nightmare. And like Lauren said, if you scale beyond that, great. But you really need to have an automated system put in place.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: If I gotta pack five books a day, I'm mad. I'm upset. Like.

[8:08] - Why You Need to Update Your Manual Solutions

Lauren: But I think even that. You know, even, even if you're, you're saying like, okay, but I'm not selling a hundred books a day. I sell consistently fifteen or twenty books a week. And I can handle that fulfillment manually. Sure. You can. And that's okay. But things happen. Sometimes life happens. Maybe you're sick and you're down for the count for a couple of weeks. Maybe something's going wrong somewhere else. Maybe you are going on vacation and you're going to be out of touch and, and unable to do things, and unable to fulfill those orders, and they're going to pile up. Or maybe you're doing a pre-order campaign that you're going to have to do a hundred in one day instead of your normal five or ten in a day.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren: Or you get some really cool earned promo opportunity and you're on a podcast, as a guest on a podcast, and you get a big spike. As much as it is like, day to day, you want to, you want to be able to scale your fulfillment. You also want to be prepared for those one-off situations – I can handle this as is right now, but if there's any unexpected spike or roadblock that's going to throw off the whole system... You need to have a plan in place for how to manage that and how to handle that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And automation is the solution to that.

Matt: For sure. If you are manually fulfilling, you still get some small kudos. Because at least you're selling direct.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Right? And again, a lot of people will opt for manually fulfilling in the beginning for a number of different reasons. For some it's just faster to, to initially do it that way as they continue to build their direct sales business and they continue to build their audience. Like you said, you know, a lot of people, they're only selling ten, fifteen, twenty books a week. And for some people that's great. There are a lot of indie published authors, self-published authors, even traditionally published authors, that don't sell more than fifteen to twenty books a week. So, you know, sometimes that might be the faster way for you to get started, to just prop up a direct sales channel and then just fulfill yourself. And great, you still get kudos for selling direct. I think some feel like it's a lower cost option. That's not always true. By the time you factor in all the shipping, packaging and materials you have to buy, and your time spent packing, driving to the post office, standing in line at the post office, doing all the things, paying the postage, it's not always a lower cost option. But nonetheless, it can seem like that in the beginning.

Lauren: I think it can also seem like a lower risk option –

Matt: Sure.

Lauren: – for some people.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Which I totally understand. And I fully support somebody who is just getting started. If you don't have the proof of concept yet, if you don't have the like, like confidence that this is definitely going to work.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So I don't – like, I don't want to invest hours of my time setting up workflows and then a month from now the business fails and it was like, a waste. I want to just go to market, get it out there. And once I have that proof of success –

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: – then I'll start building automated workflows. That's 100% valid. But I do think that there are situations where people get complacent in those, like, early days workflows and reach a point where they should have started figuring out better solutions –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – way sooner, but just never did.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And so that's what we're talking about.

Matt: Yeah. I mean, again, you're doing all the things, hopefully you will get to a point where you're just going to outgrow that manual solution.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: It might break in one way or another, but ultimately what's going to happen is you're gonna outgrow it.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: It’s just –

Lauren: Because this is a sign of success.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: This is, this is like an – the ultimate sign of success. Your business, your brand, your products –

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: – whatever it is, have grown to the point that it's not sustainable for you to manage it single-handedly. That is a good thing. This is a good problem to have.

Matt: Every business deals with this.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: When they achieve some level of success, yeah. So, it should still be applicable to the smallest of businesses, even down to a, a single title author.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Like, if you hit that point, that stride where fifteen, twenty, thirty books a week, whatever that might be. At, at the moment you start feeling that stress of like, I got to go out in the garage tonight and pack thirty orders, or whatever that might be. Like, that's your signal.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: If you hadn't gotten signals already, that’s your signal. That first time that you dread going out into your garage, or bringing all those packing materials in your living room and having a packing party... Like, it's time to start thinking about automation.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: There are a lot of costs to that, too. And it's not just the cost of your time. Or the cost of like, oh, I'm, I'm dreading going out and doing this, or –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Oh, I didn't realize how much time I spent driving to the post office three days a week, I didn't realize how much gas I spent driving to the post office three days a week, there's cost well beyond that actual like, time and financial cost, because there's also your reputation as a brand.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: And that is something that is a lot harder to recoup than money that you've spent –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – or material costs or whatever. If you, you know, find yourself in a situation where you're, you're slowing down on your fulfillment because you can't keep up with it, or you can keep up with it, but it's still just slower than what your customers have come to expect from you.

Matt: Or like you said earlier, maybe it's not even a systematic slowdown.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: It's –you got sick for a week, you got the flu or Covid or, you know, again, something. God forbid you had a flood in your house because your washing machine broke and, you know, you're out of the house for a week while the contractors are there fixing, you know, like – anything could really cause a systematic breakdown in delivery times and packaging times and even that minute detail can affect your brand, you’re right, your reputation. That’s a significant risk to consider.

Lauren: Absolutely. And it could be, it could be a risk in your reputation. It could just be a risk in, you know...I think about this when I am pre-ordering books. I don't pre-order books because I like to like, get it myself. I like to pick which copy of the book I'm going to get. But when I do, on the occasions that I do pre-order a book, I know who I will not pre-order from because they take longer to deliver it. Like, I have a list in my head of like...okay, I know who I'm not ordering from. And that is not a reputation that you want to have as a service provider, or like a product provider in any way. That's a, that's a huge blow.

Matt: I can't disagree with that. I still find humor in the fact that –

Lauren: I know.

Matt: – you won't preorder books because you want to pick out the copy yourself. I bet bookstores see you come a mile away and start trying to shut the doors.

Lauren: Are you kidding? They love me.

Matt: Yeah, I mean.

Lauren: I’m a great customer.

Matt: Anyways, it’s a great point you make, though, like, you know. It's not just about financial risk or things like that. If you're spending the time to build your audience, you've started selling direct, you're doing the right things. You don't want to start walking backwards on those successes because of something as simple as you didn't feel like packing orders that day, or something happened that stopped you from doing that. There's just, there's, there's lots of different scenarios where, yeah, I mean, manual fulfillment and not doing it on time, correctly, every time, could damage your brand. And that's that's worth a lot more than, you know, some of these other risks that we, we've already touched on.

Lauren: Yeah. You know, I think that there's a lot of ways that, that small things like that can build up very quickly and undermine your success, your authority, your reputation. And why would you want to take those risks if you don't have to?

Matt: Well.

Lauren: Yeah.

[15:54] - Signs Your Manual Strategy is Not Working Anymore

Matt: You touched on some of the things at the top of the show that are sort of signals that your manual fulfillment strategy is not working anymore. I think we should, you know, run through a couple more of those. Like, I just, I think it's highly relatable for people. There are clear and definite signs, you know? The obvious one is the dread that you might feel –

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: – when you have to go and pack and ship orders. But again, there are other signs that, that you should be looking for. You know, a big one, again, would be things like negative feedback. There are current – should I name names?

Lauren: No.

Matt: Okay. There are current authors right now who are very popular, who are selling a lot of books, and they do a lot of print, not just ebooks. They're running them through certain providers who are known for bad quality, who claim to have fast shipping but don't. And you can see it in like, Facebook posts or Instagram posts, like it's just comment after comment of like, dedicated fan or reader, but it's like, hey, where's my book? You know, I pre-ordered this and it's ten days past the drop date. Or, you know, hey, I got my book, but it's like, looks like somebody played football with it in the snow. Or like, you just see these comments and this negative feedback and like, that takes a toll, you know? I think it's super important when you're trying to do things like build your own audience, build your own brand, that the last thing you need is a bunch of really bad comments on a social media channel – which is where everybody hangs out – because of things that you totally could have controlled by automating certain processes. Or taking some of the, the risk out of the process by turning that over to an automation specialist versus it being hand-fulfilled by you, or your kids, or your neighbors, or your friends, or whatever that might be.

Lauren: I think even – not just public-facing comments, because obviously those are, you definitely want to pay attention to those. And if you're seeing a like, sudden rise in, in public comments or social media comments or something from people saying something negative about delays in getting their books. Or maybe it's that you were trying to do something custom or personal to them, and you, you did it incorrectly so they got the wrong thing, or it's not what – they weren't expecting what they got, or whatever. But also if you're getting them internally as well, if you are getting like just DMs or customer complaints or something –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – keep an eye on that too. Because... Just because they're not making them publicly doesn't mean they're not significant. If you're seeing an increase in the number of complaints –

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: – that you're getting –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – about how long it takes for somebody to receive their book, that should be a flag. That should be something that you're saying why am I seeing more and more of these?

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: To go back to what you mentioned at the beginning of this about that dread of I gotta go pack and ship a bunch of orders. I gotta, like, I can't put this off any longer. I have to go out and stuff all those envelopes, no matter how much I don't want to do that. And then drive to the post office, which I don't want to do either. There's also dread in other places there that I think is a really big problem for you, and that is if you find yourself turning down opportunities because you don't think that they're going to be sustainable for you.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Whether that's like, oh, I got invited to speak on a podcast or speak at an event, and they think there's going to be like a spike in sales.But I, I'm at my, my peak of what I can handle right now. If your entire workflow relies on okay, I have this routine of...every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night, I spend two hours packing and fulfilling orders. And you get invited to... hey, do you want to, do you want to be a guest on our live podcast on a Wednesday night? And you say no to that because you can't break the routine and you turned down a business opportunity because you need that time as packing time. That's where you've reached a point where you're like, oh, I got to reevaluate some workflow stuff here.

Matt: Yeah. And again, ultimately if you just find yourself doing the same things over and over again, not feeling like you're making any progress or, you know, creating any efficiencies for yourself, the, the, the things that you're pointing out, like it's just, it's, it's a huge signal. It's a red flag. It's, it's time to think about a better way to do it. For me, the biggest thing would be you know, if I'm fulfilling on my own, I'm very limited from a geographical standpoint. You know what I mean? I actually didn't think about this initially when I was launching my book. Partially because I knew I was going to obviously use, use Lulu and other stuff. And so I’d, I'd have geographical coverage. But I did find that, you know, there are people I know in my circle or acquaintances that would reach out and – hey, I'd love a copy of your book. Okay, well, I'm not gonna make you go buy it, but. I'd say, okay yeah, sure. I'll send you a copy. And without realizing it, you know, at first and then after the fact of like, oh shit, they live in the UK.

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: Or this person right now is living in Germany. Now I've got to pack this book. Fill out a customs slip. I've got to – you know? In other words, if you're manually fulfilling, scaling outside of your geographical area is almost next to impossible. Because of the amount of work it takes, especially right now, to ship anything internationally. Limiting yourself, I think, geographically because of your manual fulfillment strategy just sucks. Like, when you can automate something these days fairly easily. Fairly. And then have that open up a whole new market for you. Like, all of Europe. Literally. Yeah. You know, the minute you integrate something like Lulu Direct, boom, you're automatically scaling outside of the US. Overnight. To 150 different countries, essentially. Like, that's great. Because you never know who – Like, I never would have thought somebody in Ireland was going to buy my book, and they did.

Lauren: Alright.

Matt: I never would have thought somebody in the Netherlands would have bought my book, but they did. I don't know these people. Somehow they came across it. But I can tell you right now, if I was shipping from my home, that would have never been an option. I would have had to put like U.S. sales only, or something ridiculous like that. So, you know, for me, the big one really is scalability.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And that is one of the big – you know, we talked about this in the last episode there were three big benefits of, of using the APIs to grow your business. And scalability was one of them. That global coverage that you get. And it's the same with, you know, right now in this episode, we're talking about kind of the first real easy way to automate, which is again, using something like our Shopify plugins or, you know, our Order Import tool, or something like that. That still gives you that level of global scalability immediately. Right? Because we're going to print it and ship it from a printer in that area, not from the US, and ship it over to Ireland or wherever that might be. So, me personally, it's, it's scalability. I'm not packing and shipping a bunch of orders that, that are going to require customs forms and all this other stuff.

Matt: Forget it.

Lauren: I think that makes a lot of sense. I think for me, and not from personal experience with –

Matt: Yet.

Lauren: – selling products, yet, but just like, thinking about like day to day workflows in general. How often are you sitting somewhere and you're thinking about like, I cannot believe that there isn't a manual, or there isn't a solution to, to this thing that I do manually every day or every week? Like this is, this is such a silly little thing, but part of the process of me creating these podcast episodes is creating a transcript for each episode. How is it in, in 2026 that there is no built-in automatic feature in Google Docs that – you know, the find and replace tool?

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: Why isn't there a find and format? Why do I have to manually go through and bold the name Matt by hand every time? Now there is a plug-in.

Lauren: There's an extension that you can get from Google Marketplace.

Matt: Why are you bolding my name?

Lauren: Well I'm bold– I bold both of our names in the like, in the transcript I go through. But the, the transcript that I export from Adobe Premiere has timestamps and our names –

Matt: I see

Lauren: – and then the line, like the text beneath it.

Matt: I see, yeah.

Lauren: And I have to go through, like, move the lines up, delete the timestamps, and I like to bold our names so you can see, like you can see at a glance, like who's talking and when. And there is no automated solution to doing that in Google Docs. And that's insane. And that's the kind of things that this, this is where we're talking about, these things that it's like, I cannot believe how much time I spend going in my Lulu account and manually typing in – a hundred people preordered my book, and I'm going to sit here and, and transcribe all one hundred of those orders one by one by one.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: If you are asking yourself, surely there has to be a faster way to do this? There is.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But you have to go looking for it.

[25:29] - First Steps to Automation

Matt: So this is your next baby step into automation.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: What you’re, what Lauren's describing is, is what we call an Order Import tool. It's such a clever name, right?

Lauren: It's so clever.

Matt: We’ll work on that, I promise. But essentially you, you would just take an entire spreadsheet of orders with their name, their address, and the book. You would upload it into our Order Import tool. We would just print and ship every line item.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So that's, that's kind of your first step to automation. There's still some manual work there, but it's, it's your next baby step from manually fulfilling everything yourself to just taking a spreadsheet of the orders for that day and uploading it into the Order Import tool. This doesn't require that you have a plugin for Shopify or anything else like that. You just need that spreadsheet of orders. This works great for pre-orders, for Kickstarters, or any type of crowdfunding. Subscription models where every month you're going to have a list of names and addresses that you need to ship something to. It works great for a lot of things.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And, again, it doesn't require you to download or install any new technology or any plugins or, you know, change anything about the way you're currently doing anything. It just takes the shipping off of your hands and it takes that whole process that you just outlined, where my Kickstarter's done, and I've got 150 people that, that donated at a level where they're going to get a print version of something, and instead of me having to type in each one... Yeah, I just upload that spreadsheet and it's all done. So that's kind of the first sort of baby step into automating your direct sales. And again, that's great for pre-orders, Kickstarters, subscriptions. Even if you're using some sort of a tool to take orders and payments that doesn't plug and play with anything, you can still download a spreadsheet of the orders for that day or that week or however you want to do it. So that's a really great option. Yeah.

Lauren: Or even just like in your example where you're saying there are people that you want to send copies of your book.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: If that is something that you just keep on your phone or on your laptop, a running spreadsheet that you add to and then once a month –

Matt: Your street team, or whatever it is, yeah.

Lauren: Right. You know –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – a Google Sheet that any of us can –

Matt: That’s right.

Lauren: – make a note in there and say, hey Matt, we want you to send a copy of your book to this person, here's their address.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And once a week, once a month, once a quarter, whatever, you go in, you update that, or you upload that spreadsheet and you just have them sent out to everyone on there.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: That's a lot faster than you doing each one. Even if it is like, you're not filling those orders from your garage, you're still using Lulu to fill them. But now instead of you doing them one at a time, manually, you've got –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – this workflow.

Matt: We've seen, you know, some smaller to medium sized publishers use this process for ARCs and galley copies –

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: So, they –

Lauren: Magazines, and –

Matt: – can upload a spreadsheet –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – of their, their, their tried and trusted and true, you know, reviewers and, and other people. Right? Their, their early readers that they want to send ARCs to. They upload that spreadsheet and we just send every single one of them automatically, and they don't have to deal with it.

Matt: So.

Lauren: Yeah, great, great use for that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Beta readers, if you want to send ten copies to your beta readers that are in ten different places.

Matt: Or even if you're at an event and you run out of books.

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: And now you're taking names and addresses and payments and you're going to have to fulfill when you get home, just upload that spreadsheet.

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: Done. So.

Lauren: So there's yeah, there's different levels of solutions –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – that are involved in this.

Matt: And again, as we talk about the, the hierarchy of automating your fulfillment, you know, we started last episode with the top, the pinnacle, which is using the APIs. Next one down would be, you know, using the plugins for Shopify, Wix, WooCommerce, some of those. And then, you know, down there below that is Order Import tool. Not necessarily below it, but it's an easier way to get into it. It has its uses for other things as well. Even if you are using the Shopify plugins or the Wix plugins or the WooCommerce plugins. The next would be go ahead and set up your Shopify store or a Wix store or something like that. At this point we really should talk about… You know, you've decided it's time to automate. You're tired of packing and shipping. You're growing, which is great. And that excitement at growing is turned into panic and fear for the orders that have to be packed and shipped and get somewhere on time. So you know, what is that? There's a shift that you, you really need to make mentally as you start to approach automated fulfillment.

Lauren: Before we go to too deep into that, because I do have a lot to say about that. I do also want to point out that there is no wrong – let me rephrase that. The only...the only bad time to start implementing some automations is never. Like. You know, at like – if you, if you're listening to this and you're like, do I have to wait for these pain points? No you don't. If you find yourself in a position where you have the time, you have the means, whatever it is, to start implementing some automations into your workflow, don't wait until it becomes a problem. Because it's a lot harder to fix a problem than it is to prepare for a potential problem.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So there's never a bad time to start. If you have the time now and you're still in early days, that's okay. That's okay.

Matt: That's a very dad thing to say.

Lauren: I know.

Matt: Like the way that you said it.

Lauren: I know.

Matt: That’s why I laughed. It's just, you know, I would say something like that to my kids about like, cleaning their room, or –

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: – you know, don't wait til your tire’s flat. If it's low, put air, you know what I mean? But it's true, yeah.

Lauren: But yeah.

Matt: You get wrapped up in what you're doing, you don't think about it or, you know, you're listening so far

Matt: – thank you, if you are – and you're like, well, I don't have any of these problems right now. So right now you might not.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: You know? But again, if you're doing all the things that you should be doing, hopefully your book sales will pick up, or you'll add more titles and it will become a problem. So yeah, I mean, even though that was a very dad thing for you to say, it's true.

Lauren: Well, and I think it's a good segue to –

Matt: Small problems become big problems if you let them.

Lauren: Okay, dad.

Matt: Yeah, I actually wrote that in a notebook to one of my kids at some point.

Lauren: That’s cute. Aw.

Matt: That's my point though, like.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I mean, it's true. Yeah. If if you don't tackle it at some point, while it's just a small or non-existent problem –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – it will become a big problem. Yeah.

Lauren: Yes. Because when you find yourself in the weeds, way over your head, drowning in orders, then you don't have time to take the, the, you know, process and go through and try to automate everything.

Matt: Yeah.

[31:58] - Mindset Shift to Automation

Lauren: So in this shift of like, how do you start thinking about it in terms of like, what do I have to change here? I would say the first step to that, and the first thing that you should do, is take the time to kind of take a holistic look at your whole workflow. And this is something that we've talked about in other, in other episodes in other areas of doing this. AI is a great way to kind of do that for you. If you want to take like a – I know you don't like the word audit, but I feel like it's a good one to use here. Go through your complete step by step of your workflow, either by yourself or upload that to ChatGPT and ask the question of how can I streamline this?

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Because I think especially a lot of creators or small business owners or entrepreneurs, when you're starting something from square one, you build on it as the need, like as the need arises. Even like, think about this podcast. We started with two microphones and a soundboard. And then we wanted to start filming, so then we got a camera. And then we wanted to improve the studio, so we made adjustments to the studio. And then we needed better lighting, and then we needed better travel equipment. And like we've, we've bought new things over time and this process has evolved over time. There reaches a point where you have to stop and take a look back and say, okay, of all the things that I've built up over time, are these all still serving me to the best of their ability? Is there a way for me to streamline this? Are there things that I could cut out of this?

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Is there software that I'm using that I'm paying for a subscription, that I'm only using it for one step of my process, and somewhere along the way I invested in another piece of software that could do that for me, and I didn't even realize that redundancy existed?

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So I think that now is a really good time. As you're shifting focus from manual fulfillment to automated fulfillment, to take a look at that and say, okay what, what is happening here? And of these things that I'm doing here, where are my weak points? Where are my pain points? What are the things that I haven't come up with solutions for yet, or the time consuming things?

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And is now the time to fix those? The answer is yes.

Matt: The other important thing as you're doing that is to realize that you don't need to automate everything. That's not your goal. Your goal is as you just said, when you find these little speed bumps in your workflow, or these things that are taking more time than they should, and there is an automated solution for that, that's what you're going after.You really want to remove those speed bumps in your process. Because you're right. When you're in build mode, that's all you do is you build, build, build. And you're often building on top of things. You don't have the luxury to kind of look backwards in the rearview mirror and go, I just added this new thing, I don't need that thing anymore, kick it out. You just, you keep going and you keep going and you keep going. And everybody does this. Like, we do this too. Like at Lulu, there are times where we have to, you know, we take a yearly audit of all the software we're all using. And are we still using this one, or are we still using that one, or – So. Yeah. But recognizing that your goal is to not automate everything. You don't want to automate the personality right out of what you're doing. You don't want to automate, you know, everything out of your brand. You just want to automate the things that are slowing you down. Or, in many cases, automation means you're saving some money somewhere. And so there may also be opportunities to cut your costs by automating. I think that's the, the important thing. But like you said, yeah, you have to do that holistic audit. You need to know, you know, where those things are.

Lauren: I think you want, you want to buy back the time that you're spending on it or the money that you're spending on things that you don't need to be spending it on, so that you can reinvest that elsewhere. So if you're afraid of like, automations like replacing the human element of what makes your brand special, what makes your relationship with your customers or your fans special, whatever that is. The more you can automate the back end stuff –

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: – the more time you can spend on even more humanizing stuff. Or even more – like, you can spend more time on the creative elements that are the thing that makes your brand your brand. Does drawing a heart and hand-writing everyone's name on the envelope that the package comes in? Like, is that your special touch? Like, okay, sure. But maybe if you buy back all the time that you use on that, there's something else that you could come up with that is a really fun, unique, personal touch that you can do somewhere else in your business –

Matt: Yeah, I want to touch on that for a minute.

Lauren: – in a different way. Go ahead.

Matt: Because quite often the argument that I get sometimes around automating everything is just that.

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: Like, people do a lot of that actually, and it's, oh yeah, I like to put a little heart on the, the postal envelope or whatever. And I think my, my readers, my fans, my customers like that. Well they do, you're right. We all like that. Like if you get something, and I talked about this in the last episode when I ordered that book from Paul Millard.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: There was a handwritten thank you card in there. Now, to be fair, because these are fulfilled by the organization that helped him design the book, he probably filled out a hundred, two hundred of those things and – but doesn't matter. It's his handwriting, he wrote a thank you, and it gets slipped into the thing. And I thought that was a nice touch – we all do. There are other ways you can achieve that same level of personal touch, right? So if you automate something such that you can no longer put a little heart on the package, what you can do, is because you're selling direct and you have everybody's names and addresses. Once a quarter, on special occasions, send out postcards to everybody. On Valentine's Day, send a postcard out to everybody who's bought a book from you that year so far, or the last twelve months. Happy Valentine's Day, thanks for buying my book. It really made my week, or whatever. Like there are other ways you can instill those personal touches to keep that two way sort of relationship going with your readers. So yes, I understand that when you automate certain things, like the fulfillment of your books, you do lose some opportunities there, you know, to do those things, but you can replace those with other opportunities you've gained. Because now you have the time to go back into your, your database now and go man, holy crap, I didn't realize I've already had two hundred buyers added to my list now. Like, I should send them all a thank you card, or I should send them all something special or nice, whether it's an email or an actual postcard or whatever. Like, you now have these other opportunities afforded to you. So yeah, I think that's a great point that you made, and I wanted to show that there are alternatives when you cut certain things out, you can replace them with other things, because now you also have the time to do that.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: So yeah.

Lauren: It's a great marketing tip too.

Matt: Oh, yeah.

Lauren: Because think about that. I ordered a book from somebody in May, and the book arrived in a padded envelope that had a little handwritten note on it, I’d be like, aw, that's cute, and then would promptly throw out the envelope and take the book out and read it.

Lauren: Right. If I, if I ordered a book from somebody in May and got a regular padded envelope with a printed label on it, and then in December I got a handwritten postcard from the author saying, Happy New Year! Thanks for making this year great and being one of my readers.

Matt: Unexpected, by the way. Because it's not coming with an order you placed.

Lauren: Right?

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Unexpected, sweet, and might be a reminder to be like, oh yeah, they said that we're going to have another book coming out later in the year after I bought that one, I should go check their website and see if that book’s out –

Matt: That’s right.

Lauren: – that book is out yet.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So that’s a two for one.

Matt: There you go.

[39:54] - Solving Your Fulfillment Problems

Lauren: Alright. So how do we actually go about solving these problems? Because we've talked about a lot of problems and why you should solve them. But what, what tools or recommendations do we have for how people can actually solve these problems?

Matt: We touched on a few and those were, you know, you pointed out earlier that when you're manually fulfilling you can't account for things that life throws your way. Life just happens. Maybe you've got kids or a partner who is a pain in the butt sometimes, or very needy French bulldogs – obviously speaking from experience here – things just happen, right? So fulfilling by hand, it becomes a lot to manage on your own, but it's just a huge drain on your time. So, you know, obviously the solution to that... What you're doing now is probably ordering your books in bulk. Again, they're in your garage or your shed or another room in your house or whatever, and you're doing that by hand. Automation is obviously the path, right? When you start stepping up, you know, pain points from there. It's things like, okay, how do I handle this pre-order I want to do? Or like we talked about earlier, I want to crowdfund my next book, I want to do a Kickstarter, how am I going to fulfill that? You know, am I going to be stuck at the end of this Kickstarter with, if I'm lucky, three-to-five hundred backers that I've now got to ship all these books to? Like, I mean, I just, I can't fathom shipping out three, four hundred books, dealing with the packing and the shipping, the tracking numbers that then have to be emailed to everybody one by like, oh my God that – nothing makes me want to crawl up in a hole and die faster than that. So, you know, again, the automation for that would be something like using an Order Import tool, like we talked about, where you just take that list, upload it, and boom, they're all getting printed and shipped. You're not touching any of that, tracking numbers already being provided to them the whole nine yards.

Lauren: Yeah. That same tool is also a great solution for subscriptions, which is the next one of these like, major pain points, I think. If you are creating repeat content and you realize over – because this is again, this is an evolution of your brand. Most of the time, some people might start out right from the beginning as a subscription model. But if the evolution of your business turns into, you know, I'm pretty consistently putting out content quarterly and I have people that are consistent repeat buyers every quarter, every new thing that comes out, they can buy it from me. And they've started expressing interest in like, rather than me having to go manually order this every time a new book comes out, do you have a subscription that I can sign up and you'll just automatically send it to me? You'll just automatically charge me and send it to me every time a new thing comes out. And if you find yourself in a position where you're saying, yeah, that sounds great, I can see why my customers would want that, I want to set them up like, with that solution. That Order Import tool is also a great way to handle that because you can just have your subscriber list, you can have your spreadsheet that is your, your repeat purchasers that have subscribed and signed up for this subscription and just, you know, once month, once a, once a quarter, every time a new issue comes out, whatever, you just go ahead and hit the button on that.

Matt: Yeah. And then I think the last one we talked about scaling. So again, it's next to impossible to scale geographically when you're manually fulfilling. You almost have to find an automated solution. And again, you can use an Order Import tool, an uploader, like we talked about. The easiest way really would be to take one of the other paths though. The next step, which would be again a Shopify plugin or Wix plugin, or WooCommerce, or one of those where you just take Lulu Direct, you plug it into your Shopify store, and now you've instantly opened up European markets everywhere. Now it's not just limited to where you are within the US and how quickly you can get a book shipped to somebody in California, or whatever. Now you're talking global scalability immediately. Overnight. With virtually no upfront investment or anything else. You know? Being able to open up over 150 new markets, you know, overnight with virtually no money up front and just a little bit of your time like, that is – there's no faster way to scale a business like that. So scalability I think again, you're not going to achieve that manually fulfilling. You have to, you have to go to an automated model. And that really should be something like a Shopify plugin or even the API.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So go back and listen to the last episode. You could do –

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: – you could do the API if, if you have the stomach for that, or a friend that's a developer, or you're a developer, or you're just very tech savvy and you really want to go that route. Go listen to that last episode and look at some of those resources.

Lauren: Yeah, that's, that's your solution if you have more robust automations that you want to put it into place.

Matt: The APIs, yeah.

Lauren: Really complex ones, if you want to, you know, take all of these things in this episode to the next level – we probably should have put this in the other order.

Matt: It’s alright.

Lauren: It's okay. That's alright.

Matt: Doesn’t matter.

Lauren: Well, if you listened to that last episode and you said, oh man, this is, this is too complicated for me, but I like the ideas happening here. Then hopefully this episode was more your speed.

Matt: Or vice versa. If you're listening to this episode and you haven't listened to the last one.

Lauren: Then you definitely have to.

Matt: And you're like, I need a more advanced solution. Go listen to that last episode.

Lauren: And as always, as you are building on, as your brand is growing and your success is growing and you are building on the blocks that you have in place, there is maybe hopefully going to be a point where you outgrow these automations and your next solution is an API integration. So prepare yourself in advance. Go listen to that episode.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

[45:39] Episode Wrap Up

Matt: I just thought of another one.

Lauren: Okay?

Matt: A Disney job. The water taxis that go from some of the hotels over to the parks.

Lauren: The friendship boats by EPCOT and Hollywood Studios? Or the ones in the Magic Kingdom loop?

Matt: No, no, no. Like, from Polynesian over to Magic Kingdom.

Lauren: Which I didn't know until last year were very different boats.

Matt: Oh, yeah.

Lauren: Very –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Because I’ve never stayed at the Magic Kingdom, I'd never, I've actually never stayed in the Magic Kingdom area. I've –

Matt: So you never done Contemporary, Grand Floridian, Polynesian?

Lauren: So I've been to all of those resorts, but I've never stayed at them.

Matt: But you’ve never stayed in – gotcha.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Oh.

Lauren: Yeah. And it wasn't until – it was actually, the year we went to PodFest and I got there really early in the day before it started, and I spent the whole day on Disney property without stepping foot in a park. And I challenged myself to not take the same transportation twice. And that was when I learned that the boats in that Magic Kingdom area are totally different boats –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – than the EPCOT area boats. Which is also different boats than the ones that take you from Port Orleans to –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – Disney Springs. Three different types of boats. So that is a good –

Matt: That’s right.

Lauren: – call. That part won't make it into the episode.

Matt: I would argue it probably should over some of the other stuff, but whatever.

Lauren: Maybe, maybe it will. Maybe it will. Who knows? But that's – if you're, if you're at a loss for what kind of comment or review to leave us, and you want to say hi, tell us what job you would want in a Disney park, or on Disney World property.

Matt: If you would want a job at Disney.

Lauren: No, no no no. Don't tell me you don't want to a job at Disney, I don't want to hear that. If you don't want a job at Disney, feel free to not leave a comment. But if you're like, man, wouldn't it be cool to be a ride operator on this specific ride? Or a water taxi driver. Or one of the acrobatic chimpanzees in the Festival of the Lion King show at Animal Kingdom? Whatever your heart desires, let us know.

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: Alright. Well, you can leave those comments or reviews on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify. You can email us at podcast@lulu.com, shout us out on Lulu social media. We'd love to hear from you. Love to say hi if you have any questions, comments, concerns. If you need any Disney advice. Feel like we could help you out there, separate from publishing.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And if you have any questions about automating your book fulfillment, we're here to help. And until then, we'll be back with another episode next week.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: Thanks for listening.

Matt: Later.

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Lauren

Lauren is the Content & Community Manager and co-host of Publish & Prosper, Lulu’s publishing, ecommerce, and marketing podcast.

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