Wednesday, November 04, 2009

More problems with Lulu uploads


A new, if slightly boring blog, on how to publish books with Lulu.comThe first blog posted in January 2008 was for problems with my Flashes to Ashes book. It was a Crown Quarto Full Bleed book.

This one, a promotional copy of Outsiders, is a 44-page saddle-stitched A4. Book sizes below 68 pages cannot be perfect-bound with Lulu.


The key phrase here is ‘saddle-stitched’. The covers for saddle-stitched books require no spine, though it is almost impossible to verify this on the Lulu website.



It took me five hours to find these words (only revealed when you try the online one-piece cover upload):



One-piece cover requirements:



Your file must be a PDF



Spine width: 0 Postscript points wide (0.000cm)



Spine begins 604 Postscript points (21.31cm) from the left.



Total cover width: 1208 X 860 Postscript points (42.61cm x 30.34cm)



Basically, this means the length of your InDesign document should be 42.61cm x 30.34cm.



If your pdf cover includes imported text or graphics against a similar coloured background they can often come out in a different tone – even though it looks perfect on your screen.



Best thing to do is open the pdf in photoshop which will flatten which will rasterize (whatever that means) the file in to a single layer after asking for a DPI (choose 300) and colour palette (choose RGB).



Converting to a pdf (from an InDesign file)


Follow the Lulu pdf guidelines here, which include downloading a Lulu pdf preset, then selecting it during the Adobe pdf preset process.


Also you must still embed the fonts. The same Lulu guidelines page has this information. You may have to download Lulu’s Adobe Job Options too.



And the last problem concerns ftp transfer, which you will need to do because your pdf will undoubtedly be over the 300mb limit



FTP file transfer



With ftp software FileZilla you need to fill in three login boxes (connect to, username, password).



You connect to Lulu with this address: ftpupload.lulu.com



Lulu tells you that username and password is the same as your Lulu login details – but you actually need to type your full email address in the username box for the ftp logon to work.


NOTE: This blog may be amended as further problems arise. Goodbye.

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