In a recent blog post, we predicted that Dec. 26th would be one of the highest traffic days for new readers buying eBooks.  We crunched the numbers and are happy to report that indeed, the day after Christmas – when millions of folks were playing with their shiny new e-readers and tablets – eBook downloads doubled, then spiked again Dec. 29th. Take a look:

With that, we’re pleased to announce the winner of Download Day and $100 off their new Lulu purchase :

Buddy World Books
by Paul Woodward
Paul used the free sample method for generating buzz for his works and climb to the top of the bestseller list.  You can learn how to use this method for your own works by checking out our recent post on Making More Off Your eBooks by Selling Them for Free.

Runner-up with their Lulu Short Story Contest submission:

The Littlest Ninja
by Criscelle Henderson and Micah Bonnell
These two authors submitted this work back in November for the Lulu Short Story Contest.  It just goes to show you how some promotion can help spike your visibility, no matter how recently you’ve published.  Way to go you two.

Wow.

We just can’t get over how many truly remarkable stories we received for the first ever Lulu Short Story Contest.

Our panel of 25 judges carefully read through the 2000+ submissions, picked their favorite, then read it out loud to the rest of the judges. From there, judges voted on which stories they liked the best from the readings and tallied the results until there were three clear winners with the most votes.  Your stories made us laugh, made us tear up, and some of the judges even got into literary debates over their favorites that lasted for days on end (no, really).

It was amazing to see everyone take such a passionate interest in our authors’ work. I can’t express enough how hard it was to pick just three finalists. But, we had to…SO! Without further ado (and because the suspense is killing me)…here are the winners of the Lulu Short Story Contest:

1^ST PLACE WINNER:

The Red Boots by Poornima Ram Kiram

$1,000 Cash
Barnes and Noble NOOK
A review in Shelf-Unbound Magazine
Free Lulu Publicity

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2^ND PLACE WINNER:

Grass by Charles D. Shell
$250 and a Barnes and Noble NOOK™:

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3^RD PLACE WINNER:

Revenge by Gail Kavanagh
$100 Gift Card to Barnes and Noble

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Honorable Mention:

Persona Quietus by Jesse Lee
Lovely Stranger by Jennifer Porter-Kennard

If you didn’t win, don’t let it get you down.  So many of the stories were so excellent and hey, now you have an eBook version of your story and your name out in the world for millions of readers to see. All just because you believed in yourself. Neat huh?!?

You can take that shiny new eBook of yours and promote it this holiday too for what we’re calling Download Day.  We did some research and figured out that December 26th is the highest traffic shopping day for eBook sales – much like “Black Friday” in November. So, we’re throwing a good old-fashioned author sales contest for Download Day and the author who sells the most copies of their eBook on December 26th, 2011 – even if you sell your eBook for free – will win a Barnes and Noble NOOK and $100 off coupon good for anything on Lulu.

Learn more about Download Day, the highest traffic buying day for digital content on the Lulu blog here. And thank you again so very much for helping make the Lulu Short Story Contest such a success.  Due to popular demand, we’ll soon be posting a full list of all 2,000+ submissions to the contest for everyone to read and we plan to publish an anthology featuring all the semi-finalists and three winners for all to enjoy.  More details on that to come soon.

All the best this holiday from Lulu.

eBooks are the hot topic these days and with good reason.  Industry analysts are estimating 24.5 million lucky folks will be unwrapping shiny new e-readers this holiday season, which is expected to double overall eBook sales over last year’s whopping $263 million.

eBooks provide both a speed to market and potential for a higher revenue share that are just too beneficial to ignore. With Lulu’s direct-live status an author can create an eBook and have it available for sale almost immediately and keep up to 90% of the profit.  Each day, we see more and more traditionally published authors like Stephen Stark and Kevin Powell self-publish eBooks of their own.

“Suddenly all these people are publishing their content on their own because they don’t feel they’ll get the same money or value elsewhere and they are right,” says Stark.  “We’ve reached a point where authors can make a much higher royalty by self-publishing and are free to experiment in ways big publishers can’t.”

It’s true; eBooks provide opportunities to reach huge numbers of new readers, and we want to make sure all of our authors are set to take full advantage of those opportunities.  So this year, we’re proclaiming December 26th the first annual Download Day.

Much like Black Friday in November, the day after Christmas is the highest traffic shopping day for people buying eBooks.  Think about it, you just got this cool new gadget; you’re gonna want to play with it and start filling it up with apps, games, and…(say it with me) eBooks!  Will your work be one of them?  It should be.

To sweeten the deal, we’ll give the Lulu author who sells the most eBooks on December 26th, 2011 (even if you’re selling for free) a brand new Barnes and Noble NOOK, and a $100 off coupon – good for anything on Lulu.  Hit up your friends, your family, heck, even your mailman, and send them a link to your eBook.  The bonus here is with more sales, you’ll gain more visibility for you and your work by moving up in bestseller lists in places like the iBookstore℠ and NOOK Bookstore™ so even more readers will discover your titles.

Want to create an eBook but don’t know where to start?  Fret not, would-be digital author, with our Word to EPUB Converter, you can upload .doc, .docx, .txt, and .rtf files and have them made into an EPUB within about two – five minutes.  You can also visit our eBook landing page for more information – your source for all things in eBook publishing.

Once you’ve published, be sure to read our helpful eBook marketing blogs for tips on how to create an eBook and make sure all these new eBook reading customers will see yours.  You might learn something you didn’t think of – like how selling your eBook for free can actually make you more money.  Pretty soon, you’ll have readers all over the world flipping the digital pages of your remarkable work.

Happy Download Day!

The iBookstore is a service mark of Apple Inc.

The winner of Download Day will be notified in mid-January 2012.  Contest is open to all Lulu authors that have titles available in EPUB format.  Total sales will be calculated from lulu.com and our distribution partners.

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).

Alright, first you’ll need to get all of the files together that you will later put into your master .zip file (called a container).

A Closer look at ePub files (*Be aware that file names are case sensitive*):

A .epub file has at least the following files/folders in it to function:

* mimetype – Typically a plain ASCII text file that has the line “application/epub+zip” in it.  This file tells a reader/operating system what’s in the .ePub file. This file must be the first line in the zip file, and cannot be compressed.
* META-INF folder – Contains at least the container.xml file, which tells the reader software where to find the book in the container (typically in the content.opf file detailed below).
* OEBPS folder – Recommended location for the book’s actual content

* toc.ncx  file – Table of contents arranged with navpoint tags.  Make sure the UID matches whatever is in your content.opf file because some readers won’t display your book properly if it doesn’t.  The play order values found in this file must also be in order and will return an error if the order skips over a number.
* XHTML files – The book’s literal contents are listed in these files which are like HTML files with closing tags associated with each element.  It is up to you how you arrange your content but having a separate .xhtml file for each chapter tends to look better on e-readers.

Now that you have all your files in order, you can make the .epub container that houses all of them.

How to Make the Container File

* First create a new .zip file
* Copy the uncompressed mimetype file into the .zip file.
* Copy all of your other files (which should all be located in an OEBPS file) into the .zip file.

* Change the .zip file extension to .epub.

Once you are done with these steps, you should have a readable eBook in a format that works on most readers.  Now, all you should have to do is upload your work to Lulu.

Making Your eBook Available for Download

• In the Publish section, click the ‘eBooks’ button.
• Click the ‘Start your eBook‘ button.
• Enter a title and author name. Select your project’s availability.  Click the ‘Save &
• Continue’ button (any of these options can be changed at anytime).
• Upload the file you want to use by clicking the ‘browse’ button, searching your computer for the file you want to use and then clicking the ‘Upload’ button.
• If you upload multiple files to create an eBook, you will have to select a size for Lulu to create your eBook.
• Click the ‘Make Download-Ready File’ button to convert your file into an eBook.
• Download and preview your file and then click the ‘Save & Continue’ button.
• Create your cover and click the ‘Make Cover’ button. Then click the ‘Save & Continue’ button after the page reloads. Learn how to create a cover here and see What the eBook cover for.
• Fill in the Description fields and click the ‘Save & Continue’ button
• Set the price for your eBook and click the ‘Review Project’ button (eBooks with DRM cannot be offered for free).
• Review your project. Click the ‘Change’ button for any section that needs adjustment. If everything is to your liking click the ‘Save & Finish’ button.

Once you click the ‘Save & Finish’ button you should have a book that is ready to share with the world in cutting-edge fashion – something any reader on the go will appreciate.

What a month it has been.

As NaNoWriMo and the Lulu Short Story Contest come to a close – we’ve been thrilled by the hundreds and hundreds of responses we’ve gotten from authors of all ages and genres who couldn’t resist the chance to share their creativity and who found out just how easy it can be to publish an eBook.

We’re not done yet though.  The official cutoff date for the contest is Dec. 1st, so there is still time to submit a story of your own and enter to win $1000, a NOOK™, free publicity, and a professional review of your story in Shelf Unbound Magazine.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions too.  Mainly from authors who just want to be sure they have entered their story correctly.  Remember, once you’ve published your short story as an eBook with our EPUB Converter, to copy and paste your story’s web address on our Survey Monkey form.  Once you click submit on Survey Monkey, you’ll be taken to a “thank you” page with a 20% off coupon on it – good for your next purchase on Lulu.  We may need to tweak your submission too in order to get it to pass the validation requirements set by retailers like the iBookstore^SM. You still keep the copyright though and we will only change the formatting – not the content itself.

Once Dec. 1st hits, we’ll gather all contest submissions and our panel of judges will fire up the coffee pots, pull out the reading glasses, and get to work reading all your remarkable entries.  We’ll announce the first, second, and third place winners mid-December.

So keep that creativity coming – you still have till Thursday.  You can do 600 words in no time!

In the 10 days since we launched the Lulu Short Story Contest, we’ve received hundreds upon hundreds of submissions, authors are helping each other out more than ever on our social networks, and authors are finding just how easy it is to publish an eBook of their very own.

Based on the whopping 150+ comments on the original contest announcement blog – we’ve noticed that a lot of you have some of the same questions about the contest, so here are some helpful tips to consider as you get closer to submitting your own story.

600 Word Max: We know it might be a challenge, but it is definitely possible to submit a short story that is 600 words or less.  Facebook fan Jason Johnson puts it best:  “I agree that 600 words is short, but I also think that’s the point.  What can you tell in 600 words that still makes it interesting to your readers.” Oh, and the 600 word count does not include the title and copyright material.

Use the Template: I love that people are looking for ways to spice up their entry – be it with pictures, a table of contents, etc.  But avoid straying from the template we’ve provided.  We’ve done most of the work for you formatting-wise and designed the template to pass through eBook validation as smoothly as possible so you can be sure your story can be distributed to places like the iBookstore.

Multiple Submissions: Yes please! You are certainly allowed to submit more than one short story, so keep em coming.  600 words not enough to contain all that remarkable creativity? Then write and submit as many new short stories as you want.  Several people have submitted more than one already.  We’ve even had one guy ask if he could send in 400 separate stories.  No matter how many you give us, submitting more than one will increase your chances at winning.

Submitting Your Story: Submitting your story is just a matter of visiting this link to Survey Monkey and filling in the 5 questions.  The most important part is providing us with a link to your work.  Once you finish publishing, you can click the “My Lulu” tab.  Here you’ll see a list of your projects, including your new eBook short story.  Click the “view/buy” button next to your work’s title.  Copy the web address of your story’s product page and paste it into question 4 on Survey Monkey.  This will help us track submissions and is how you get your 20% off coupon for participating.

Pricing: Once you get to the pricing step in the publishing wizard.  You will be able to set your price to anything you want – even free.  The default price is set at $1.24, which is the minimum for making revenue off your story.  If you’d like to give your eBook Short Story away, simply enter $0.00 as your price.

We’re excited to see so much activity going on with this contest and definitely plan to do more in the future.  There is still plenty of time left in the month though, so send us your short story today.  Good luck and thanks for playing.

Want even more short story writing tips?  Check out this handy article from Fiction Factor.

The Lulu Short Story Contest is here and starts right now!

As many of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) – a great time to put your nose to the grindstone and try to complete a 50,000 word novel in under 30 days.

But we got to thinking: over 200,000 authors participated in NaNoWriMo last year and only 30,000 actually made the deadline.  That leaves 170,000 dedicated and talented folks high and dry.  That’s a whole lot of creativity to waste.  So why not make things easier?  After all, creativity is about quality, not quantity.

Thus, the Lulu Short Story Contest was born…

Throughout the month of November – all the way to December 1st – anyone can participate in our Short Story Contest and take the pressure off the creative process.  Better yet, we want to help folks see their creativity available to the public as quickly as possible too, so we’re gonna help you create an eBook out of your short story that’ll go live in the iBookstore and on Barnes & Noble’s NOOK.

How to play:

• Write a 600 word short story using our handy eBook template.  Download the template here.
• Follow the list of things you don’t need to worry about available here.
• Upload your work to Lulu.com and send it through the Lulu ePub Converter
• Make sure to set your work to public availability and set to “sell on Lulu, the iBookstore, Barnes and Noble, and more.”
• Once published, submit a link to your eBook’s product page, along with your name and registered Lulu email address to SurveyMonkey to help us track submissions and claim your 20% off coupon.  Once submitted, you’ll receive a notice within Survey Monkey confirming your entry.
• Feel free to promote your contest submission on our Facebook and Twitter (#nanowrimo) pages too

What about prizes?!?!

This is the best part.

First place:

• $500 cash
• Barnes & Noble NOOK
• Feature in Lulu Staff Picks and Lulu Blog
• Free mentions in upcoming Lulu publicity
• Professional review of your work

Second place:

• Barnes & Noble NOOK

Third place:

• $100 gift card to Barnes and Noble

All participants:

• 20% off coupon for next purchase on Lulu.com

Winners will be selected by a panel of Lulu judges and announced mid-December after review of all submissions.  Bring on your remarkable stories for a chance to win some amazing prizes!

No purchase necessary.  U.S. only.  Prize packages for the Lulu Short Story Contest include:  First place prize of $500, a Barnes and Noble NOOK™, publicity in upcoming Lulu materials.  Second place prize of a Barnes and Noble NOOK.  Third place prize of a $100 gift card to a Barnes and Noble retail store location.  All participants will receive a 20% coupon good for their next purchase at Lulu.com.  The maximum savings for this offer is $100. Sorry, but this offer cannot be applied to previous orders. You can only use this code once, and unfortunately you can’t use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. This great offer expires on December 31, 2011 at 11:59 PM, so don’t miss out! We can only accept English-language content.  While very unlikely, we do reserve the right to change or revoke this offer at anytime, and of course we cannot offer this coupon where it is against the law to do so.  Lulu also reserves the right to make any short story submitted publicly available and to make small edits to content to aid in distribution to third-party retail stores.

Throughout the month of November, contestants will have a fabulous chance to publish a short story and win all sorts of remarkable prizes (some that are super top secret…shhhhh).

Details to come Nov. 1st.

Don’t miss it.

To play, just visit the Lulu Facebook page and add onto the scary story we post on our wall.  We’ll even help get the ball rolling by providing the first line.  All you have to do is keep the story going.  The comment with the most likes will win! Easy, right?

So thrill us, chill us, and write us your best scary story.  Big savings await the ghoul who wins.  Happy Halloween!

No purchase necessary. The maximum savings for this offer is $100. Sorry, but this offer cannot be applied to previous orders. You can only use this code once, and unfortunately you can’t use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. This great offer expire on December 31, 2011 at 11:59 PM, so don’t miss out! While very unlikely, we do reserve the right to change or revoke this offer at anytime, and of course we cannot offer this coupon where it is against the law to do so.

We also got the chance to surprise one lucky Book Expo America attendee with a third HP Mini Laptop,  just for visiting our booth back at the conference in May.

Without further ado, the winners are:

• Ronald Libertus – for his photo book wonderfully titled: Cupcakes and Lollipops
• John Hurly – A long time customer of Lulu’s services.  John purchased a Best Seller package for his upcoming work.
• Austin Reale (pictured) – Good old Mr. Reale, blogger for Reading Teen, stopped by the Lulu booth several times a day throughout BEA and was about as excited as I’ve seen anyone to receive a brand new computer.  Yes, I asked him to blog about it.

Help us in congratulating our winners on their new technological prowess in the comments.  Now, they’ve each got a shiny new computer to help them start on their next remarkable works.  As for the rest of you faithful Lulu blog readers, keep your eyes peeled for other contests in the coming months and for your chance to win from a selection of great prizes to help kickstart your publishing career. And most of all, thank you to HP.