bookvault.app Reviews 82

I had an issue with some orders, but Tom (Support team) helped me get it sorted. The issue was on the print side, and Tom didn't give up until the situation was fully resolved. I am so thankful for that!

I placed an order with Bookvault on March 26th and paid extra for express delivery, expecting the book to arrive by April 1st. It didn’t. I had to follow up myself, and only then was I told their printers were down — something they hadn’t communicated. They also said the express delivery date shown was only an "estimate," which is odd considering express services typically guarantee tighter timeframes, especially for an additional fee.

I requested and received a refund for the express shipping, and was told the book would arrive shortly. It’s now April 11th, and I still haven’t received it. Disappointed by the lack of communication, the delay, and the unreliable service. Update, they emailed me back today saying they cant assist me because they shipped the book and I didn't pay for additional tracking. So note, additional express delivery doesn't mean if you pay extra that it will arrive in time. And unless you pay for tracking too, if your order doesn't arrive it is not their problem. Update, I only received €5 refund for the express fee. No refund for the actual book that hasn’t arrived, or the publish fee of €16 I paid. Do in total I spend €31, got €5 refundedand nothing to show for it. Not to mention 3 weeks of wasted time.

Updated from 3-stars to 4-stars on April 16th after BookVault upgraded all my orders to rush status and got them printed and shipped.

Updated from 1-star to 3-stars on April 7, 2025:

After this review was published, I was contacted by BookVault Customer Service: "Firstly, please accept my sincerest apologies for the lack of response on this thread. It appears that the issue had been flagged for review by our IT team, but unfortunately wasn’t marked or escalated correctly — causing it to slip through the cracks."

Five days later (over 2 weeks after my initial order), I was told why my files didn't produce any books: The "Your Reference" field in the bulk upload HAD to be unique or the book order would silently fail (no warning, no error message, just no order processed). I re-uploaded my books with the new, unique codes, (worked around 2 website crashes when I tried to have the system generate unique IDs AND when I checked the box to get emails when my orders ship -- neither of which I could get to work), and it looks like my book orders are now in the system (and will print and ship at some point in the future).

Original Orders Placed March 24th, 2025:

I placed 51 bulk book orders in multiple batches. In one batch, 19 out of 20 book addresses (UK) were dropped or lost. In another, 3 out of 5 were lost. I reported the problems. "Tom" from customer support asked me to email him the batch files. I did. That was 10 days ago. No updates. No fixes. No books submitted. No books printed. Crickets.

On top of that, lots of the website functionality doesn't work: include a pdf, or ask to "send me email confirmations when books ship", etc. get 500 server errors or 404 file not found errors. REALLY PAINFUL.

I don't know if the 5-star reviews are fake or what, but this place is a dumpster fire. I plan to contact my credit card company to cancel the payments if I don't hear from them in the next 3 days with a fix or a refund.

If you have all the time in the world and plenty of money to pay in advance, maybe these guys are awesome. I wouldn't know because they don't actually seem to be able to print any books.

Wish it was otherwise because I spent a lot of time and money setting up titles and uploading bulk shipping files. Ugh.

I ordered a book , it was a print on demand book. I ordered it on the 28th February. I chose the none tracked delivery service.
When my book hadn't arrived by about two weeks ,I contacted them, just to be told there was nothing they could do as I didn't use a tracked delivery option,they didn't basically want to know.
The author of the book got in contact with them as quite a few people had told him that they hadn't received their books.
It then transpired that they hadn't even printed our books ,let alone posted them! I finally received my book a month after I'd ordered it. So it wasn't the non tracked delivery service that was at fault, but them themselves!

As a print-on-demand business Bookvault did a great job on my 272 page hardcover PPC book. There was an initial problem with blurred print which they rectified at no cost, so they take a pride in their work. That is the good news.
The bad news is in distribution. Having printed the book, we all want to sell it - Bookvault included. But though they promise 24 hours before it appears on Great British Book Shop, it has now been over a month and it still has not appeared. Initial responses to my queries revealed that there was some issues with distribution via Amazon (though the book has appeared on Amazon) but no explanation about why this should impact distribution via TGBBS, which will get me more money per book. Now, they have stopped responding to me.
It is important to keep customers informed about what is going on when there are problems and to give reasonable estimates about when the problem will be resolved. Customers will be patient if they are kept in the loop.
I have not been kept in the loop, I don't know what is going on, I fully expect the TGBBS offering of my book on Amazon to disappear any day, so I have set the book up on Amazon myself. Less money for me - but at least I will get something!

Not reliable at all. The colours are not true to the file submitted. I requested a proof of my book. It printed fine so I bought 20 copies and when they arrived the colours on ALL copies were distorted. How can an author trust this company? It reflects very poorly on my brand. I have asked them to either send me new prints or the money back. Let’s see if they own their mistake. VERY UNRELIABLE AND UNPROFESSIONAL.

I have been using Bookvault for over two years for POD printing of paperback novels and illustrated children’s books and the quality of printing, service and delivery has always been outstanding, far exceeding that of their competitors. Orders of the children’s books are normally 2-300 and are bought for resale in schools. It was indeed a great relief to find Bookvault since their main competitors were consistently of poor quality; Ingram Spark in particular regularly supplying substandard, unsaleable books by the dozen and then replacing them with equally substandard books, having insisted that the covers were separated from the books and photographed to prove it before replacing them with more substandard books - the cover removal presumably to prevent underhand sale of the books.

When a recent order to Bookvault resulted in a large number of substandard books, I was surprised as well as disappointed. But on contacting customer relations, they couldn’t have been more helpful. In my query, I sent a few photos of the problems and, given experiences with Ingram and Amazon in the past, offered to remove all the covers. Bookvault replied immediately to apologise and then to say that cover removal was totally unnecessary. All the substandard books were replaced and the replacements were perfect. I informed BV that although the substandard books were not acceptable for resale, rather than bin them, they would be given to charities for distribution to schools with scant resources. BV readily supported this. Some of the books have already gone schools in Thailand and the rest will eventually go to schools in Kenya.
So, in summary, top marks to Bookvault for dealing honorably and sensibly with what was probably a post-Christmas period technical glitch. They are a totally professional company who interact constructively with clients and I have no reservations over recommending them.

I changed to Bookvault after problems with a previous printer. The book quality is lovely, something my readers have commented on. Any problems are answered promptly with quick resolution. It's so nice to deal with a company who care about their products and are so helpful.

I have published my first book, a picture book, with Bookvault and, as a complete novice, have contacted their support team a lot! They respond quickly and everyone has been unfailingly helpful. I want to single out Tom, who has gone above and beyond to sort out a discount issue coming up with a workaround for my IT problem whilst the IT department works on the ongoing issue. It's stressful trying to market your book but Bookvault have been very good.

I have been using Bookvault for the past year or so to publish print-on-demand books for a range of authors and titles. I started this publishing model ten years ago with Createspace (later KDP) which I found to be excellent for distribution but limited by the quality of printing and paper.

Bookvault provides a good range of paper and product, for a very sensible unit price. Courier prices can be high but that is the market.

On 6th January this year I ordered thirty copies of a hardback title for the author who is in New Zealand. The books were shipped on 10th January and received in Auckland on 14th January. The author is delighted with the quality of the book and especially the service.

This level of service is fantastic thank you.

I am very frustrated and disappointed with Bookvault.app taking so long to resolve a file page number discrepancy.
I have been repeatedly re-uploading a title and submitting the page number of my file to match their count to no avail.
They asked me after getting nowhere to send the file via WeTransfer or similar because my file exceeds 10MB.
Why did they not make this clear after I flagged the uplaod issue 3 weeks ago?
I can see that they downloaded my file via WeTransfer 3 days ago, but still no update.
This is issue stems from a previous problem which they failed to draw to my attention on a previous file with different page number count (same Title).
They say I should have previewed the image of the book before finalising the order, but when I tried to do so, no image was available.
After I reported this by uploading a screenshot shot, they then told me that coth-bound hardcover books are not able to pull the image through for viewing.
So on a previous print of the Title, 4 pages of the book was printed outside of the margin.
To their credit, they offered to send me a fixed copy free of charge, but on receipt of that item the issue had not been fixed.
Coming back to this issue, I ended up reducing font size of the second language (this is a dual language book) to ensure the image remains within the page border.
If they fix this issue I have no problem upping my review to a 4.

I strongly advise against using Bookvault for print-on-demand services. Over the past few months, my experience with them has been an absolute nightmare. They failed to deliver a significant portion of my customers’ orders, leaving my small business in financial and reputational ruin. Despite numerous emails and phone calls, their communication has been dismissive and unhelpful, with delays in reprints and refunds stretching over weeks - well exceeding UK laws.

Their courier issues have been ongoing since September, but they continued dispatching orders without resolving the problem, causing further chaos. As a result, I’ve been forced to refund customers, endure harsh backlash, and take on debts to keep my business afloat.

If you are a small business looking for a reliable partner, Bookvault is not the company you want to trust. Their lack of accountability and professionalism has cost me dearly. I’m now pursuing legal action and seeking alternative providers. Learn from my mistake and stay away.

Edited:(3rd December 24) They went as far as deleting my account while there are still outstanding orders in transit, leaving me in an even more difficult position, unable to update my customers about their undelivered items.

Although the orders were eventually resent. I have faced weeks of delays in receiving refunds, with some still outstanding. This level of negligence is unacceptable, and I am determined to ensure that justice is served.

Seamless experience and outstanding customer support!

The whole experience has been very easy, there are multiple guides on their help centre to assist with setting up and starting with Bookvault.

I have now added all 20 of my titles, linked them easily with my Shopify store, Bookvault are fulfilling my orders with no issues. I haven't had any poor feedback from customers.

Keep it up!

We've been working with BookVault since early 2023 when we set up our Shopify store. They are the only printer we have found who will print all the book sizes we offer and also allow dust jackets regardless of size (which is essential to our readers - they love their DJs!).

Before, we were working with multiple retailers (Lulu, KDP, IS) to get the various sizes, which was a pain for buyers.

We rarely have to contact Support, but we appreciate that, despite time zone differences and sometimes holiday conflicts, we do get an answer from Support within a couple of days. For any order issues we've had, there aren't any they haven't made right either with a reprint or a refund.

Quoting comparable services from other printers either triples our print cost for individual copies or requires minimum orders in the hundreds of copies, per title, per format. BookVault has made so much possible for our small business.

DISAPPOINTING👎👎
After using BookVault for several months, I can honestly say this print shop is a massive disappointment in 1) shipping timelines and 2) with customer service/follow-up. Additionally, their app for uploading your books is glitchy AF.

I've had to submit more tickets with this company than all of my other providers COMBINED.

In fact, I've spent more time cleaning up their messes with customers than I have EVER experienced in a DECADE of delivering books.

From misdelivery to missing books to missing tax info and missing shipments, BookVault takes ZERO accountability and hides behind endless back-and-forth "just wait longer" emails and B.S. policies designed to evade responsibility.

They're just another hack trying to make a profit off the backs of hardworking authors. Ultimately, a complete disappointment.

VERDICT: FAIL 👎👎

Contacted them to have 250 books printed. They don't offer a phone number. You'll need to arrange a video call, which I did. Aaron contacted me, and it seemed good. I was about to place my order. I just needed to know the width of the spine, which he promised to supply. But, of course, he didn't. So, by then, I had a phone number and called and spoke with Tom, who told me Aaron was in a meeting, but he would make sure he called me back. Of course, he didn't. In a way, I'm glad. Because inside a FB group of authors, one of the other members said he'd had a bad experience with them as well.

Hi I am a paying customer of bookvault and very disappointed over their treatment of me. I sent a support email request emails sto rectify an issue marked urgent another email on tuesday in April, raised another ticket and a few chasers since tuesday and up to a week still no response even though they promise a reply time of a day. This is the second time this has happened only that this time it's an expensive delay. I requested monthly payments back only to find out they are still taking money out of my account despite no service and having no response to my messages. When they did response it was completely not answering the questions

Having published about eight titles via BookVault (POD) and had no problems at all or at any stage I can't understand why the reviews on here are so negative. The titles have been for a number of my author clients and none have expressed any complaints about quality, binding, paper etc.

I've built a good relationship with staff and I feel that helps rather than treating the process as a faceless online transaction. They've offered good advice when I've asked questions and been flexible/helpful many times.

I have no hesitation in recommending them but many people think it's a simple process putting a book together (it's not!) and can be done by anyone. Some knowledge of the processes involved offers great advantages and I've been designing for about forty years and taking photos for over fifty - that's helped. I recall litho printing etc so cut my teeth in that era.

Thanks BookVault

I am a UK based self published author illustrator and the quality of Bookvault POD children’s books is unmatched. Originally I tried Amazon KDP print on demand but the paper and cover stock options were too flimsy , so unsuitable for children’s picture books, and the KDP price was also too high. Bookvault offers loads of trim sizes and stock options and I’ve been totally delighted with the printed book quality that I’ve received. Plus they do it at a really competitive price that works for me. The Bookvault author dashboard had some weird glitch going on with a book thumbnail that fed through to my POD paperback image on Amazon, but when I contacted support they’ve always come back to me within 48 hours, or you can schedule a video call. Thank you everyone at Bookvault!

I'm absolutely thrilled with the level of communication, professionalism and mastery provided by Bookvault!

As an author living in Europe, finding a paperback distributor for both the US and Europe was a huge challenge. Not only does Bookvault provide amazing service in both parts of the world, they do so flawlessly!

I ordered a copy of the first book I uploaded to see how it would look and I had accidentally chosen the wrong cover size. They printed it, took a photo and contacted me to let me know I had picked the incorrect size and told me what the correct size was!! I was floored with the amazing service! When I fixed the issue and got my book, it looked fantastic!!!!!

I recently had a different question and have been so happy with the expedited and helpful communication they provide!!!

I can't recommend Bookvault enough!!!