Lulu Help

by Sherrie Wilkolaski Lulu Publishing Consultant
March 12, 2010
Comments (8)

Ready to join the ePub boom?

In Lulu Help, Lulu News, Promotions, Tips and Tricks, Walkthroughs — Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lulu now offers ePub conversion services to take your book into the future.  Get your book ready for the iPad, Sony Reader and other electronic devises with our ePub conversion service.  We offer three service packs depending on the number of pages  in your manuscript.

Our ePub service includes the following:

  1. Tagging and linking of the Table of Content (TOC)
  2. Proofing of the illustrations to make sure they’re resized properly
  3. Removal of the original page numbers and page headers (to prevent them from appearing in the middle of the page)
  4. Re-flowing of the text by chapter and re-pagination of the entire book

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by AJ McDonald Public Relations
March 12, 2010
Comments (11)

How to Make an eBook Anyone Can Read with ePub

In Contest, Events, Howto, Lulu Blog, Lulu Help, Lulu News, Marketing Tips, Promotions, Tips and Tricks, Walkthroughs — Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In a recent post I talked about how all of you would-be eBook authors should know your file formats, or at least be somewhat familiar with the most commonly used ones.  As an author, you want to make your work as accessible as possible, which means making your content able to be read on as many devices as you can.  Since it is Read an eBook Week, and Lulu is giving away three Apple iPads, I thought it might be useful to provide a how-to tutorial for the most universal eBook format: ePub.

Many new authors might make the mistake of thinking that if they have a portable document format (PDF) of their book it means that it can be read on an e-reader or other mobile device.  While in many cases the PDF can be opened, the text is far too small because it is a static or unchangeable image.  ePub makes it so your text is resized to fit the screen of any given device.  Since the text in ePub format can be changed in terms of size, font and color, reading an ePub book becomes a much more personal experience for the reader.  Sounds great right?  But how do you make an ePub book?

You really have three options:  let Lulu do the work for you with our conversion services, use a conversion program like (Adobe InDesign, eCub, Calibre, Google ePub Toolkit, etc.), or you can do-it-yourself.  If you decide to do-it-yourself, I’ve added some great directions I found over at jedisaber.com.


What You’ll Need:

* A text editor (like Text Edit or Notepad) that can edit text files, HTML, and XML.
* A program that can create .zip files (which should be built into OS X or Windows).

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by Nick Popio Community Architect
February 25, 2010
Comments (15)

Chat Is Back

In Lulu Help, Lulu News —

You asked for it, and we listened. Our new chat support (beta) is live. We’ve spent the past several months finding a solution that not only responds to your inquiries quickly, but gives you the answers you need.

Beginning today, you’ll find a chat button in the upper right of the Lulu support page. Initially, we’ll offer live support in English from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. East Coast time Monday through Friday. This ensures that we will cover the period when we see the heaviest volume of support inquiries. Rest assured, we’re working on expanded language and time support.

In the coming weeks, you may see a message that says “Chat unavailable” where the chat icon should be. That’s part of the transition as we find the right allocation of agents to meet your needs. We’re working quickly to get agents trained with the new tools, but we wanted to get chat up and running as quickly as possible for you.

Above all, we want to make sure you succeed. We truly believe that your content matters and that you deserve to reach the world. We want to do all that we can to help. Chat support is one part of our effort. Integrating the community forums and help into one platform is another. We’re working on other features that will help you publish better and faster and reach more readers, so stay tuned!

We’re excited to offer this new chat feature, and we’re hoping you are to. We’re eager to hear your feedback, so let us know what you think.

We’re listening.

by Leon T. Customer Voice
February 5, 2010
Comments (7)

Easy DVD Creation Tutorial

In How to Publish, Howto, Lulu Blog, Lulu Help, Lulu News, Tips and Tricks, Walkthroughs —

Did you know that in addition to books and calendars, Lulu also publishes CDs & DVDs? If you’re interested in creating an audio book, video tutorials, your latest music album, or home videos, Lulu can help.

As the DVD specialist at Lulu, I’ve noticed that if an author has a DVD problem, it is usually due to a disc formatting error. We offer two distinct DVD formatting options – one for video and one for data. It helps to know how the file type you upload determines whether you create a data DVD or a video DVD.

A. DVD-Data: This type of DVD will work only on a computer, not in a household DVD player like the one connected to your TV. This DVD is similar to a store-bought software disc and can contain audio, pictures, software, and almost any other file type you desire. The most common DVD error happens when an author tries to make a DVD for video, but uploads a file that isn’t formatted casual playback. Improper formatting of a DVD-Video disc will create a DVD-Data disc by default.

B. DVD-Video: This kind of DVD is great for capturing and sharing your favorite moments through video. When you put a DVD in a household player, the player looks for one master file to pull information from and then displays it to you on your TV. Authors can use a number of file formats as the source for their videos ( .mpeg/.avi/.wma/.wmv), but then comes the tricky part. When you are making your video DVD, all of your video files have to be in a video_TS file and all of your audio must be in an audio_TS file. These two files then go in the master file, which can either be a ZIP Archive file or an ISO-9660 file. Sounds hard right? Well, fortunately, there are many third-party software programs, including Nero (PC) and Toast (Mac), that are made just for this purpose. These programs will convert your files into an ISO-9660 disc image or VIDEO_TS directory. I recommend an ISO0-9660 disc image.

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by Nick Popio Community Architect
October 22, 2009
Comments (10)

Help Lulu Reorganize Our Help Pages

In Lulu Blog, Lulu Help, Lulu News —

Lulu is getting ready to reorganize our help pages, and we would appreciate your help. To make sure that the new organization works for our users we have created an online card-sorting exercise. Please take a few minutes to tell  us how you would organize help topics, and give our development team some valuable feedback.

by Dan London Director of Online Marketing
June 2, 2009
Comments (31)

Need Some Publishing Help?

In How to Publish, Lulu Help — Tagged: ,

Lulu HelpThe Lulu help section has been updated with quite a few new entries. As Nick mentioned, there are now a number of great video tutorials that will help you get through the publishing process, but we’ve also added a lot more information in general. There are sections on how to set creator revenue and the final price of your Lulu content and the different paper options for books. Lots of answers to common publishing questions can be found in the Lulu help section.

The Lulu help section is a perfect place for any aspiring author to start before getting ready to tackle the publishing process.

Click Here to Go To Lulu Help.