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.

1. VIDEO_TS directory – If you only have a VIDEO_TS directory, you must zip it into a .zip file or convert it into an .iso file to upload it to Lulu. If the VIDEO_TS directory is not at the root level of the ZIP or ISO file, the disc created will be a DVD-Data disc instead of the DVD-Video disc you intended. You can test this by unzipping your .zip file or mounting your .iso disc image and checking to make sure you only have a VIDEO_TS directory at the root. The VIDEO_TS directory contains all of the video files and menu files needed for a component DVD player to recognize. If the DVD player cannot find the VIDEO_TS directory at the root of the disc, it will not be able to read the content.
2. ISO 9660 disc image – This is ideal if your software can create it. This disc image is what gets burned onto your DVD disc. The great thing about uploading an ISO file is that it gives you complete control over the formatting of your DVD disc. The biggest advantage to this option is the ability to add certain extensions to the formatted ISO file. Specifically, ISO disc images can have the Joliet & RockRIdge extensions added to the file format.
3. RockRIdge/Joliet ISO Extensions – The Joliet extension allows a Microsoft Operating System to recognize longer file names and special characters within the ISO file. The RockRIdge extension allows a Linux/Apple Operating System to recognize longer file names and special characters within the ISO. The Lulu converter only creates an ISO disc images with the RockRidge extension and will not include the Joliet extension. File names that have been truncated when Windows reads the disc can cause your DVD to fail.
4. ZIP Archive – ZIP files are used to turn your VIDEO_TS directory and files within the directory into a single .zip archive that is suitable to upload. This is necessary because Lulu cannot accept directory folders and enclosed video files in a single upload. The ZIP file allows you to compress your directory folder and enclosed video files into a single uploadable archive. If you upload a .zip file that contains a VIDEO_TS directory, our server will unzip the file and create an ISO disc image from your VIDEO_TS directory, which is why it is so important that you only upload a single .zip file that only contains a VIDEO_TS directory. If you upload more than one file your project will automatically default to a DVD-Data disc that simply contains your uploaded files.

I hope this has helped give a little more insight into how our free DVD service works. I know the language of file types and such can get confusing, so we’re evaluating services that we could offer to make the process even simpler. If you have suggestions on DVD and CD creation services that you’d like to see, please let us know here.

And if you have any questions for me about the DVD creation process, please add them, too. I’m happy to help!

 

To see the fonts up close, click the small image to the left.

 

When I began writing many years ago, I found that the complexities, trials and tribulations of publishing distracted from the joy of writing. Like most authors, I began my quest to get published long before I actually finished writing my first book. Cover design, editing, formatting, ISBNs were all new to me, and although they were essential topics, I often wished that the publishing system was simpler. I just wanted to finish my first book and get started on my second. I was fortunate to stumble across Lulu in my search for publishing help and still remain thankful. I was rescued from the deep abyss of “I’ll never get published.” Working with Lulu truly empowered me as an author by reducing frustration and minimizing distraction that consumed so much of my creative time. On a very practical level, Lulu also helped me get published much quicker and allowed me to sell quite a few books. In turn, this allowed me to eat something besides Ramen noodles and tomato soup. I so enjoyed the experience that I actually came to work at Lulu in August ‘09 so that I could help others.

If you’re new to publishing or have published before and just need more information on the variety of services available, then you’re in the right place. In each of my upcoming posts, I’ll take an in-depth look at everything from editing and cover design, to finding an agent and marketing your book. As an author and publishing expert, my aim is to cover topics in a way that will provide a balance of valuable insight and knowledge to help you constantly improve your work — and minimize distractions.

My virtual door is always open, so please send me your thoughts and questions on publishing, marketing and anything book-related that you would be interested in reading. Right now, I am in search of a few authors that would be interested in sharing your “story behind the story.” If you’re interested, please post a link to your Lulu storefront in the comments section below, and I will get in touch.

You might have started your work alone, but Lulu is here to help you finish.

Happy Publishing!

 

But having followed Steve Jobs’ presentation today, here’s one thing we don’t have to speculate about: If you publish an eBook on Lulu, it can be read on the iPad.

That’s because Apple will use the ePub file format, an open standard. We added ePub to our creation tools last year because the format is open, allows flexibility, and ensures that our authors will be ready for the future no matter the evolution of digital devices. It stems from our mission to build the world’s best open publishing platform so that authors can reach anyone, anywhere — and to our commitment to help creators navigate the rapidly changing world of digital content.

Clearly, our authors see value in ePub. Since we introduced the format, the number of eBooks created on Lulu has increased 40 percent. And Apple’s announcement of the iPad today is another win for this open approach.

So if you want to be ready for the iPad — not to mention many other popular devices, including the Sony Reader, already available — get started with your ePub eBook on Lulu today.

 

The innovative creators of the Resolve blog recently asked what the next 10 years hold for photo books — will they be digital or physical, open-source or proprietary? Will they be read on a Kindle or an iPhone? And what aesthetic innovations will have transformed them?

I spend my days thinking about just those issues. I’m a Senior Product Manager here at Lulu and have photo books in the portfolio of products that I oversee. I’m excited about the future of photo books and am certain that the genre will look quite a bit different in a decade. Here are a few thoughts:

The Long Tail Gets Longer
The rise of digital photography and the proliferation of cameras in the portable electronic devices we all carry makes each of us a photographer, collectively empowered to capture and save more than 25 billion images every year. That’s more than 10 times the number of photo prints produced only a decade ago, and, according to research providers such as PMA, the tail still has a long way to grow.

The Democratization of Publishing
The evolution of Web-enabled print on demand technology pioneered by Lulu means that any aspiring creator can turn a digital document into a printed physical artifact, including high-quality image reproduction. Open standards in eBooks mean that the same digital content can be published and distributed virtually to any marketplace and any device with a connection to the Internet. This means that tomorrow’s photo book, once published, will be made available globally at the click of a button.

The Wisdom of Crowds
With all this content available the problem becomes how to sort it and make it available and discoverable by the people who need it. Google is only one part of the solution here. Collaborative filtering technologies and services such as weRead (which is owned by Lulu), Twitter and Yelp allow us to benefit from each other’s knowledge and experience to find content that’s relevant to us — or have it pushed to us via feeds and updates.

The Virtual Marketplace
As well as empowering creation and collaboration, the Web also facilitates commerce. The intersection of the long tail of content and the rise of the virtual marketplace is an opportunity for any aspiring creator — be they a journalist, writer or photographer. Not only is it now easier to create, but it’s also much easier to sell. Sites like Fotolia and Lulu allow photographers to commercialize their works instantaneously and be discovered by commercial buyers and enthusiasts in a way that was not possible before. And there might be no better measure of the quality, interest value and impact of a photographer’s work than the number of buyers prepared to pay money for the right to own it.

The Future of Photo Books
It’s clear that the photo books of tomorrow will not be the same as those of today. Change will be driven by the rise of new formats allowing creators to connect with their readers in new ways, including combinations of text, images, audio and, ultimately, video. And as the quality of on-screen reproduction continues to improve, consumption will move progressively from print to electronic devices such as tablets and smart phones.

The long tail phenomenon, the democratization of publishing, the wisdom of crowds and the virtual marketplace are four trends that will allow creators and consumers alike to profit from and enjoy all the more this already popular medium.

 

click for larger image

Exciting news for the Lulu Studio! In our efforts to continue to make improvements,  yesterday we released eight new fonts for you to use in your photo books, cookbooks, calendars and poetry books.

To see the fonts up close, click the small image to the left.

Keep checking for more new fonts in the future and let us know what you think!

 

As a result of these changes, you will be able to easily find articles, discussions, and more for anything you are searching for. We will be migrating all of the data from Help, as well as the last three months of data from the forums to ensure that as much relevant information as possible is preserved. That said, if there are particular forum threads you want to make sure you have a record of, please copy them into a text document before February to make sure that it does not get lost in the shuffle. In addition, there will be limited access to the forums in the days before we make the transition. We will announce this time period in advance, and we will keep you informed of our progress. We hope this will cause a minimum of disruption and we apologize in advance for any inconvenience it does cause.

Some of the new features that we are very excited about adding to the community are:

• Ideas & Feedback – You will be able to submit your recommendations for how we can improve the Lulu experience and vote on ideas you like that others have submitted.
• Announcements – We will be adding a section for announcements for scheduled site maintenance, release notes, guidelines and more. All of this will be hosted externally from Lulu, so if Lulu is down you can still get information about what’s going on.
• You will have the ability to see your open support cases.
• You can see new articles and discussions that have been added, as well as the most popular ones.
• You will be able to rate users, articles, discussions, and anything that you like.

As we roll out these new features and integrate them into Lulu we will be asking you for your feedback. We want to do everything we can to improve the experience based on your responses. We hope you’re excited as we are about the opportunity for us to improve the Lulu community.

 

I’m honored to have Julio Vazquez guest blog today. Julio is one of our very first authors and has become good friend of mine, too. He’s a leader in the Lulu Community and can often be found helping others in the forums. I asked him to share his experiences with Lulu here on the blog.

2010. I can’t believe it’s been 8 years since I first stumbled on Lulu.com.

Looking back, I had originally come across the site during a job search. When I looked at the positions available, I didn’t find anything that I felt I could fit in comfortably. While I was on the site, I became intrigued by the fact that Lulu were offering the ability to publish and print books for literally pennies per page.

I had already written a novel and a set of short stories. I didn’t have any particular success placing the work with publishers because, frankly, I didn’t do the sort of market research that would place me with a traditional publisher. I just wrote and what I wanted to do was make my work available to others to read. I wasn’t worried about making multi-million dollar deals. I knew that there were few authors who got to that level in the business. I just felt that I had some good stories that I wanted to share. Lulu gave me the opportunity.

I remember the first time I went through the process in late 2002. Watching that manufacturing building pulse to produce my work. I got things I didn’t expect and some I didn’t like. The book looked like a textbook, and there was a table of contents and other things that I considered ugly. Fortunately, Lulu wanted to learn and get my work to the point that I’d be happy with it. We talked through the forums and emails about publishing and expectations and what would work better. The publishing process improved. Finally I published my first two books, The Truant Murders and Pictures at an Exhibition: Vignettes from my Mind.

Okay, they didn’t sell much, but that wasn’t the point. I was able to share these works with others easily now. I did sell some and I was also able to send copies to the man who encouraged me to write. I got back a nice hand-written letter that encouraged me and stated that I validated his career (he was a H.S. English teacher). That defined success for me.

I started contributing to forums and I started a blog. I wanted to help others who were writing. Things like how to get through writer’s block intrigued me and I tried to help folks get over the hump and suggest strategies that could help. Overall, I suppose I was successful because I was asked to be a community leader.

Sometime during these years, I wrote two more novels, Death at Disney and Where is Love? Death at Disney had legs. It sold more units than I expected for a self-published book.  I’ve been in technical communications for a long time and I finally used Lulu to create a technical book that is my best seller yet, Practical DITA. I believe that the ability to get the book out to press quickly (2 editions in less than 6 months) helped achieve that success. This book has been a boon to me and the company for which I work, SDI in showing that we do have expertise in the field.

Overall, I’ve had a pretty positive relationship with Lulu and have been happy with the results. I look forward to getting 2 more books out this year (if I can ever slow down enough to spend more time writing) with their help.

Enjoy the ride!

Julio Vazquez

 

Size Matters

The Lulu Studio(TM) makes it super easy to upload your photos from your computer and drag them into a photo book. Before you jump in, take a look at the kinds of photos you are planning to use. Are they mostly horizontal or vertical shots? Landscapes or close-ups? The Lulu Studio (TM) lets you choose from 8 different sizes of books from 3.75×2.5” to 8.5”x11”. If you are showing off wide shots of your family together or how your whole house looked decorated, you probably don’t want to try to cram those photos into a square 8.5”x8.5” book because your images will get cut off. Conversely, a square book is great for close ups of food, people or your tree. Picking the right size book for your photos can make all the difference.

Its a Photo Book – Not a Novel

Captions are a great way to embellish a photo. They help preserve what people were thinking at that moment and can add a little humor to an already great album. Be sparing with comments so you don’t detract from your photography.  When a person picks your album up off your coffee table, they should be delighted by the images inside, not bored from all the reading ahead of them. On that note, pick a font that is visually appealing and complimentary to your overall theme. The text should help the progression of the book, not grind it to a halt.

Story Telling Through Balance and Composition

While a photo book is mostly visual, it is still a book that needs to tell a story. This can be done by carefully organizing your photos in an order that makes sense. I find it helps the look and flow of your book if you balance the content of the photos. It would be silly to lump all of the pictures of people together, then all the pictures of things, then places, etc. If you’re making a book about your yuletide party, show pics of the food interspersed with people enjoying it. Show the exterior shots of your house, mixed with people showing up. It helps to think of a photo book like a story board for a movie. This makes it more entertaining and a real page-turner!

Learn How to Share

This is the digital age and photo books don’t have to be limited to just a table or shelf, you can make your photo book into a downloadable ebook too. You spent a lot of time making your book. Imagine how cool it would be to show anyone you run into your hard work on your phone, flash drive, or e-reader or website. Everyone will think you’re super tech-savvy and be jealous they don’t have one to show.

The Cover Can Be Compelling

If a photo speaks a thousand words, then the one that’s on the cover speaks a million. Choose a photo for the cover that fully captures the entirety of your project. It should be the most eye catching – be it funny, beautiful, or different, it just needs to be compelling if people are gonna crack that first page. The quality of the cover photo is a pretty good indication of the rest of the photos within.