Adventures with Lulu – Part 2

On Friday morning the proof copies of ‘Academy’ arrived back from Lulu, or rather, Lulu’s printers. Now, before I talk about the quality of the proofs, I think I should mention Lulu’s printers. Quite frankly, I don’t know who did the printing for this book!

Most POD (print-on-demand) books, until recently have been printed by Lightning Source in the USA or their plant in Great Britain. What makes the POD book printed by Lightning Source identifiable is a code which appears on the final blank page, the ‘LV’ code. In my POD publisher research over the past year, I have amassed some thirty POD books from various publishers – all have borne the recognisable ‘LV’ code. ‘Academy’ has no such code on any of the final blank pages. Now, the copyright page may tell you it was ‘printed in the United States of America & the United Kingdom by Lightning Source Inc.’, but then, that was my presumption when I did the internal layout for the book. You see, my understanding was that Booksurge, in light of the recent moves by Amazon against POD publishers (see other articles on this blog), would not be supplying print resources for the UK and European market. So, that leads me to two possible conclusions; one, my book was printed by Booksurge, hence, no code (as it was shipped from the USA), or two, it was printed by Lightning Source, but they have taken the decision to omit the customary ‘LV’ code, for whatever ulterior motive! I will be able to shed more light on this in the next week as I have another hardback book on order from Amazon from Raider Publishing’s new release catalogue. It will be interesting to see if the code is on that one. Time will tell!

Let’s get back to the proof quality. If this book was printed by Booksurge, then stand up and be counted guys and gals; start putting your insignia on the rear blank pages, because you’ve done a superb job of ‘Academy’. In light of the recent negativity towards Booksurge’s print quality – this really has the potential to change my view of them, at least until next week.

When the box arrived through the post on Friday, I knew straight away what the package contained, and it sat on my coffee table for half an hour before I could force myself to leap up and open it. I was confident about the internal layout of the book, as I had been pleased when I viewed the PDF file on Lulu’s ‘My Projects’ page. My biggest concern was the cover art. I had taken considerable time trying to get the background colour on the spine just right to match as closely as possible to the front cover art, so it did not visually ‘grind’ or look garish. This was the key, and there can be some variable when artwork returns from a printers. However, I had nothing to worry about; the blend was subtle and almost impossible to see the difference. Overall, the cover was on very high, thick gloss paper, no blurring of colours, sharp focus on the text, and everything perfectly aligned. Internally, I was particularly pleased with the font I chose, Book Antiqua. The layout was perfectly reproduced from the original PDF file, no blank pages, and no smudged or faded print. The book is simply superb quality. So excellent in quality that the printed book could not hide my countless typos! I would say one out of every three pages had a typo (not spelling) error. Although many editors and authors alike will tell you how easy it is to miss these when you review the original file, it is amazing how the real published, printed page make them wave out at you like those annoying kids waving from the back window of the car ahead on the motorway. ‘Doh, how the f*xK did I miss that one!’

I actually ordered three copies of ‘Academy’, which was a mistake, as these can be consigned to the dud pile! So my advice, just order one proof copy until you are certain the proof will be as near perfect as you can get it. Resubmitting the revised file is straight forward on the Lulu site. Simply go in to your project page, click revise, and the software will guide you back through the process. It is a matter of selecting ‘Approve/deny’ and then loading up your revised word or PDF file. Always remember to delete the original ‘source’ file before you reload to your book project. When you then review your project, it should be clearly displayed as ‘Academy – revision 1, revision 2’ etc. You can revise as much as you like until you get it right. Only then, click the ‘Approve’ button.

After some four to five weeks, I actually feel quite confident using Lulu’s publishing site. It is not for everyone, particularly if you are not very proficient in using Word or Adobe Acrobat to its full potential. It is very much about the preparation work at this stage that makes using the site easier. Many of the problems I experienced were down to either the original source file formatting or using Internet Explorer instead of the more suitable Firefox.

The real work of POD publishing starts now for ‘Academy’. It will be some six weeks before the book is properly fed into the internet sales and book database channels, which gives me some time to work on the promotion. I will update in future articles. The next article, ‘Academy – The Novel’ will look at the novel itself, rather than the publishing process.

Authors

5 Comments

  1. Rhiannon said:

    I really appreciated your blog and its a great resource for me as I began my new venture as a self-published author. I had already decided on using Lulu for the first book in my trilogy and your blog is definitely a great educational tool for me. I look forward to your next post.

  2. Mick Rooney said:

    rhiannon,

    Thank you for your very kind comments.

    You know what’s interesting about Lulu is how I initially viewed them when I did my POD publisher research. I was very much put off by the degree of ‘nuts n bolts’ hands on, that is required when you use Lulu’s services. I resigned them to that pile that read – ‘great concept, but not for me’. Having used them for ‘Academy’, I have to say, I’ve considerably changed my view. No, Lulu is not for everyone, yet, they have come up with a publishing service/program that really can fit most author’s needs.

    I think, again, the reality is, whether you are with Lulu or a traditional publishers like Random House, it’s very much about the effort the author puts in no matter what.

    Good luck with the first part of your trilogy and thanks for the comments.

    Mick.

  3. USpace said:

    Great job, thank you! This is real good, I can totally relate to what you went through, I feel like an idiot for not googling for this a while ago, it would have sped me up considerably. I’m very weak with Word, (you gotta go to college for that thing) so I finally made myself find ‘Angel Editing Service’ through Lulu. Their $95 service was superb.

    My book of political poetry is a hardcover 6×9. I think a 5×7 size would have been better but they don’t offer it yet.

    Once you get the hang of Lulu, it’s pretty easy. But it can be hard navigating around the site outside of your own ‘My Lulu’.

    Good luck with your book. I will link these Lulu articles of yours to my post on the publishing of my book.

    absurd thought –
    God of the Universe says
    outlaw most poetry

    register all writers
    make them pay huge fees

    .
    absurd thought –
    God of the Universe says
    outlaw most bloggers

    license all the rest
    monitor their writing

    .
    USpace Publishes ‘Hard To Swallow’

    FREE Absurd Thoughts eBook!

    :)
    .

  4. Mick Rooney said:

    Uspace,

    Thanks for your kind comments about the Lulu articles and the link at your site.

    Very best of luck with your political poetry book.

    Mick Rooney

  5. USpace said:

    Thank you very much Mick, and good luck with this blog and your books too.

    Here’s a couple things I wish Lulu would work on:

    They must figure out how to make the links in an eBook live. They are PDFs, but whether you upload a PDF or they change your Word Doc. to a PDF for an ebook, the links show up the color Blue, but they aren’t live, they don’t work.

    Also, it would be nice to have a download counter, so you could see how many times a FREE eBook of yours was downloaded.

    absurd thought –
    God of the Universe says
    don’t write any more books

    the world has more than enough
    they might cause undue stress

    absurd thought –
    God of the Universe says
    DON’T read this book

    NEVER put it in the hands
    of someone you love
    .

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