New Features

by AJ
August 25, 2010
Comments (8)

Reach More Readers, Sell More Books with Upgraded eBook Tool

In How to Publish, Lulu Blog, Lulu News, New Features — Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Interesting read in the Wall Street Journal this morning:

People who buy e-readers tend to spend more time than ever with their nose in a book, preliminary research shows.

That’s great news for authors, because it shows that eBooks are creating ever more sales opportunities for their work. Here’s even better news: Lulu now makes it easier than ever to create eBooks and reach readers all over the world.

We’ve updated our eBook wizard so that you can instantly publish to both U.S. and international versions of the iBookstore, including the U.K., Germany, France and Canada. And we’re hard at work opening even more channels — our goal, in fact, is to create the most vibrant, multi-retail eBook publishing tool available.

Indeed, our revamped tool is designed so authors who upload eBooks today will automatically have them distributed to other regions, marketplaces and devices as they become available. That effectively makes Lulu a one-stop shop for eBook publishing. To quote one of my favorite infomercial personalities:  “Just set it, and forget it.”

Why do all this? Because more eBook channels lead to more sales. In the first three months of iBookstore distribution, Lulu authors sold more than 6,000 eBooks and earned more than $30,000 in revenue. In the first week of our new eBook publishing tool, Lulu authors have sold three times as many eBooks globally than they could in the U.S. alone.

Now, that’s something to get excited about.

by Nick
June 15, 2010
No Comments

Lulu Lens: Order History

In Lulu Lens, Lulu News, New Features — Tagged: , , , ,

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We’re looking at revising the “My Order History” section of My Lulu and we would like your feedback on what additional information you would like about your orders. Please let us know what you’d like to see. The more feedback you can give us the better changes we can implement.

by Nick
May 26, 2010
Comments (4)

Lulu Lens: What Do You Want Out Of Forums?

In Lulu News, New Features — Tagged:

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When we released our new forums back in February, we were excited. The old forums had been implemented when the Lulu.com site first went up and they had a lot of issues. Most of them were behind the scenes (admin features that were broken or added on), but they were difficult to work with. We thought Helpstream was the solution. Through a number of issues (slowness, being logged out) as well as concerns about navigation, many of our users told us they aren’t happy with the new system. We listened and have spent a lot of time trying to create a structure that will serve both our community and our internal needs. That’s where you come in.

We want your opinion. What do you want out of a world-class forum? What features do you like? What do you never want to see? We value your feedback and need your help as we figure out our next steps.

by Bob Young
April 12, 2010
Comments (23)

Bringing You a Bigger Audience

In Lulu Blog, Lulu News, New Features — Tagged: , , , , ,

You are the future.

Your knowledge and ideas are the building blocks for the next generation, the foundation that ensures we continue to progress as a society. You need ever-better ways to share your knowledge and reach more people — and you deserve ever-better incentives to do so.

Lulu is working to open publishing to everyone, to create best-in-class tools so you can make just about anything and reach anyone. Whether you are an individual, publisher, educator, or enterprise — and whether you write technical manuals or romance novels — our goal is simple: to give you the most opportunities to share and profit from your remarkable ideas, knowledge and stories.

We are launching a significant initiative in the effort.

Beginning today, you will find more than 700,000 new titles in the Lulu Marketplace, titles as diverse as Harlan Coben’s Caught from the list of New York Times bestsellers to Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. This follows the addition of more than 200,000 traditionally published eBooks that we added in November. In the coming weeks, we’ll add more content through additional partnerships as we make Lulu.com the world’s premier destination for published knowledge, ideas and expression. In effect, we are creating the world’s biggest bookstore.

Continue Reading »

by Jonathan
April 5, 2010
Comments (4)

Some names you know on the iPad

In Author Spotlight, How to Publish, Howto, Lulu News, New Features, Promotions — Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

WidemanSampleBookshelfThe iPad hit shelves over the weekend and is already sending ripples through the book world. On the first day, Apple says customers downloaded more than 250,000 eBooks — it calls them iBooks — in its iBookstore.

Some familiar titles appearing on iPad’s virtual bookshelves are Lulu’s very own: PhotoSecrets 101 Tips for Travel Photographers, Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application, Briefs, and Memories of the Future.

WidemanMemoriesOfTheFuture

A few Lulus purchased iPads. Here are a couple screen shots of Briefs and Memories of the Future.

To get on the iBookstore yourself, here are the details.

by Daniel
April 3, 2010
Comments (60)

Get Your eBook in the Apple iBookstore

In Lulu News, New Features, Promotions — Tagged: , , , , , ,

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After weeks of anticipation — and months of speculation — the iPad is finally here.

We know many of our authors are excited by the possibilities of this new device. And we’re excited to offer you access.

Apple has selected Lulu as a certified aggregator to provide content for the iBookstore. We have been hard at work pushing hundreds of titles to the store as part of a pilot program to ensure all of our processes are ready for the volume of content that we expect. I’m sure you have many questions, so let me get right to it.

Here are five points to understand:

Continue Reading »

by Nick
March 22, 2010
Comments (7)

Ideas & Feedback

In Lulu News, New Features — Tagged: , , , ,

Picture 16As many of you are likely aware, last month we introduced a new section in our Community & Support area called Ideas & Feedback. The purpose of this area is simple – we want to hear from you. We want to know what you think would improve the Lulu experience. You can post your ideas and vote on existing ones. We’ll be constantly reviewing ideas and seeing what people suggest. We’re listening.

Two of the recent ideas that have received the most votes are things like improving the visibility of templates and allowing Lulu Creators to give out coupons & gift certificates to buyers. Be sure to check out the ideas that are already posted and share your own ideas with us. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.
by Sherrie
March 14, 2010
Comments (3)

Lulu VIP: A New Level of Service

In New Features — Tagged: , , ,

John Edgar Wideman’s decision to join the Lulu community has gotten quite a bit of attention. Stories have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly and the Huffington Post. And all that coverage has generated quite a bit of interest in our new Lulu VIP Services program.

Mr. Wideman is the inaugural customer of this program, which provides white-glove service to premiere authors. It’s our most customizable offering, executed by industry-leading professionals who have helped drive the success of A-list authors. Each title receives the highest level of attention and each author retains complete control over the process, from cover design and editing to online marketing and media relations.

Indeed, our new VIP Services program provides everything a traditional publisher can offer. We launched the program to help authors gain more control over their own publishing process and recruited an experienced team of professionals with traditional and bestseller experience to lead the way. We’re extremely honored that Mr. Wideman decided to use Lulu for Briefs and that our VIP Services are part of his journey.

Our goal is to expand the visibility of authors’ works and maximize their success through red carpet treatment, personalized attention, and quality, publishing-house services at their fingertips. We’re confident that authors and agents alike will find comfort in the professionalism of our VIP Services program.

Email us today at vipservices@lulu.com for a free consultation.

by Nuno
February 25, 2010
Comments (30)

Help us with a home(page) remodel

In New Features — Tagged: , , ,

We like to keep things fresh here at Lulu. But lately, we feel like our home page is getting a little stale.

So we’re ripping up the floors and bringing out the paint … or at least the wire frames and graphics. Our goal is to make Lulu.com a better experience for both of our customer groups: content creators and buyers. We want to highlight the diverse selection of content available on Lulu.com, help our creators sell more and make sure we remain a first stop for anyone publishing or buying books.  As with any remodel, we need some ideas. So help us out!

What should we keep on the Lulu.com homepage?
What should we take away?
What should we add?

If there are sites that you think are particularly well designed, let us know that, too.

We love the creativity of our community, so give us your thoughts. And stay tuned. We expect to have an updated look this spring.

by Nick
January 19, 2010
Comments (13)

Improving the Lulu Community

In Lulu News, New Features —

One of the most important things to any company is their community of users. If anything, this is even more true for Lulu. We believe that if we don’t do a good job listening to our users and improving our offerings, then we are not helping you succeed. Currently on Lulu we have a Community section that highlights our Blog, our social networking presence, the Newsletter, Community Services Marketplace, and of course our Forums. As part of our belief in continuous improvement and providing the best customer experience to our users, we are moving our forums and help to a new, unified platform in early February.

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.