Articles tagged "EPUB"

by AJ
December 6, 2011
Comments (116)

How to Make an eBook Anyone Can Read with ePub

In Contest, Events, Howto, Lulu Blog, Lulu Help, Lulu News, Marketing Tips, Promotions, Tips and Tricks, Walkthroughs — Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Blog Update: Before you read, check out our handy new eBook landing page for the latest tips to help you publish your eBook today.



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).

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by AJ
November 29, 2011
Comments (21)

Lulu Short Story Contest Homestretch

In Contest, Lulu Blog — Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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 iBookstoreSM. 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!

 

by AJ
July 6, 2011
No Comments

What is Metadata?: How to Save Yourself Some eBook Distribution Headaches

In Lulu Blog, Lulu Help, Tips and Tricks — Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As eBook sales continue to rise, Lulu wants to be sure you have access to all the latest and greatest tools and resources to help you sell more books in this exciting new market. In order to reach the millions of customers who own e-Reading devices, it is important to stay up to speed on best practices for making an electronic book quickly and easily.

One term you’re likely to come across when publishing your eBook is “metadata.” It also happens to be one of the main causes eBooks get bounced back from distribution.  In many cases, a quick revision of your eBook’s metadata is all it takes to push your content out onto digital shelves and increases your work’s marketability.

Simply put, metadata is the who, what, when, and where of your eBook.  Items such as your title, author name, volume number, etc. are all types of metadata and are what most retailers use to appropriately list and categorize your content.  When your eBook is listed on an online store, customers will see an image of your cover, which they can click on for more information about your work and to access the actual content of your work.  Many retailers treat the cover image and the actual eBook’s content as two separate pieces and it is vital that the metadata for both match (including upper and lower case letters) so your customers are linked to the correct book interior.

For example, lets say your book title is The Greatest Book Ever: A Tale of Suspense and Intrigue by Samantha Thomas. If the metadata for your cover is only listed as The Greatest Book Ever, by Sam Thomas, without the subtitle and a different author name, then the retailers can’t be sure if it’s the same work.  With the thousands of new eBooks being submitted everyday, it becomes too difficult to try to match the cover to the content.

Luckily, on Lulu it is pretty simple to ensure all your metadata matches. When you start a new project and name it, whatever you enter into the title and author fields will autofill the empty fields in the cover step. Whenever a colon is used in the project title, the system automatically treats any text after it as a subtitle. Once you get to the cover step, you can still edit your title, author name, etc. just be sure if you do make changes, you also go back and change the project information you started with too. For authors uploading a one-piece cover, again, just be sure all the text matches the project information you enter.

Be sure to check out our knowledge base for more eBook metadata tips to help you reach more readers in more markets all over the globe.

 

by AJ
December 7, 2010
Comments (11)

eBook Distribution Guidelines

In How to Publish, Lulu Blog — Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It is an exciting time to be an author. Everyday customers find new ways to discover and purchase your remarkable works and Lulu has been proud to offer authors the ability to reach more readers and sell more books through our growing network of retail partners.

For us, the formula is simple: more channels equal more opportunities for your work to be discovered.

For authors selecting distribution, it is important to remember that many retail channels maintain strict policies on acceptable content. In an effort to ensure a lasting relationship with existing retail channels and to continue to cultivate even more options and opportunities for our authors, Lulu must uphold these policies and validation procedures. Lulu reviews all content marked for distribution and reserves the right to re- categorize and/or decline to submit books, which violate a retailer’s content policies.

One of the most popular retail channels is the iBookstore. Authors selecting this particular distribution method will need to keep these basic guidelines in mind:

  • To ensure an author’s work appears for sale, in the quality it deserves, iBookstore distribution takes at least 30 days.
  • Adult and/or sexually explicit content is de-prioritized and may be rejected if inappropriately categorized by the author.
  • eBooks in non-English languages and/or offered for free will be listed on lulu.com, but will not be distributed to the iBookstore or other retail channels.
  • Public domain content will only be submitted to the U.S. version of the iBookstore.

We know how eager you are to see your books out in the world and we want to assure you that Lulu processes your works with the utmost care. All authors are still able to publish and sell their eBooks immediately to the 2.5 million unique monthly visitors in the Lulu Marketplace for free. Lulu continues to strive to bring you the best service possible to empower you to sell more content to more readers more profitably than ever before and we look forward to your continued success on Lulu and all of our retail partners.

by Daniel
April 3, 2010
Comments (94)

Get Your eBook in the Apple iBookstore

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

ipadibookstore

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:

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by Ricci
March 12, 2010
Comments (18)

Publish an ePub. Win an iPad

In Contest, Lulu Blog, Lulu News, Marketing Tips, Promotions — Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

iPadContest_BlogBannerThe time to get in on the gold rush for ePub books has never been better.  From now until March 22, 2010, simply publish an ePub version of your book, and you’ll be automatically eligible to win one of three Apple iPads.  Yep, that’s right – just create an ePub book and you could score a brand new iPad…on us.

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by Sherrie
March 12, 2010
Comments (21)

Ready to join the ePub boom?

In Lulu Help, Lulu News, Promotions, Tips and Tricks, Walkthroughs — Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lulu now offers ePub conversion services to take your book into the future.  Get your book ready for the iPad, Sony Reader and other electronic devises with our ePub conversion service.  We offer three service packs depending on the number of pages  in your manuscript.

Our ePub service includes the following:

  1. Tagging and linking of the Table of Content (TOC)
  2. Proofing of the illustrations to make sure they’re resized properly
  3. Removal of the original page numbers and page headers (to prevent them from appearing in the middle of the page)
  4. Re-flowing of the text by chapter and re-pagination of the entire book

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by Harish Abbott
November 4, 2009
Comments (10)

Building Selection to Boost Author Success

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

Dan Brown. Malcolm Gladwell. Emeril Lagasse. They all have something in common with you: They’re on Lulu.

You’ll now find their works — and about 200,000 other eBook titles from traditionally published authors — in the Lulu Marketplace. We’ve added them through agreements with Ingram and other distributors to make their public catalogs available on our site.

It’s a significant shift for Lulu, but one rooted in a strategy to maximize author success that has guided us from the beginning. To sell more books, you need more exposure. We’ve long provided distribution choices to help you reach customers in myriad stores, including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. We’re continuing to expand those options, and we’ll have more to share soon.

But that’s not enough. The time has come for a better marketplace. Like many of you, we’re discouraged by some trends in the industry and what they might mean for the future of books. Here at Lulu we champion books, and the people who create them, because of what they represent. Books are conversations between generations that convey our best thinking and help move us forward. They deserve appreciation. And authors deserve success.

The open marketplace we’re building will have the broadest selection. It will be a one-stop shop with content from all authors, in all styles and in all formats, paper and electronic. The goal is to give readers access to the best knowledge, ideas and entertainment and to give authors access to the best audience for their works. We believe the increased choice offered by increased selection will attract more readers. And as we attract more readers, we will have more opportunity to get Lulu authors in front of people most likely to buy. In fact, we’ve invested in recommendation technology to help with that by steering readers based on their browsing patterns.

Adding 200,000 eBooks is just the first step in a journey that will unfold over the coming months, one intended to bring more success to Lulu authors every day. As always, I welcome your suggestions and feedback as we move forward.

by Daniel
November 3, 2009
Comments (24)

New Lulu eBooks are Here!

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

Last summer, while sitting in a team meeting reviewing numbers (bear with me, it gets better), an intriguing stat caught my eye: 70% of our authors make their print books available as downloads, and those authors sell 30% more books than those who offer print editions only! Even without a “real” eBook publishing option, Lulu authors were flocking to make digital files available, and succeeding in increasing their sales. Since then, we’ve been on a mission to provide a better eBook option. Today, I’m pleased to announce, new Lulu eBooks have arrived!

Why publish an eBook? The simple answer is it makes sense for both authors (universal distribution, more sales, and higher royalties) and readers (cheaper than print, instant delivery, and mobile access). How can Lulu help? By providing features to support a wide range of scenarios: give eBooks away for free as a marketing tool, automatically link eBook and print editions to enhance discovery and provide more options to readers, and offer optional copy-protection (DRM) to prevent piracy and unlicensed distribution.

Beginning today, Lulu supports all of these options, and more. With multi-device support, readers can access your eBook on a Mac, PC, iPhone (Stanza), Sony Reader, and many others. You can now upload files in the popular EPUB format, which is quickly becoming the industry standard (see recent announcements by Barnes & Noble and Sony). Concerned about losing sales when you make unprotected digital content available in the marketplace? You can now apply DRM to your eBook, and sell a licensed version which can’t be freely copied and distributed.

To support enabling these features for more than a million Lulu authors, Lulu has adopted a new pricing structure for eBooks and print downloads.  As always, it’s still free to publish, and if you choose, you can continue to give away your digital content for free. For authors who want to sell eBooks and downloads, we’ve added a fixed $1.49 base price to cover our credit card processing and hosting expenses. Applying DRM (optional, eBooks only) adds $.99 to the base price to offset the fee charged by our DRM provider.  To reiterate, authors never pay to publish, these fees are reflected in the list price and are only charged to the purchaser at purchase time.

All of us at Lulu are excited about our new eBooks, and welcome your feedback. Stay tuned–we’re actively exploring many more features, including providing easy access to retail distribution channels with the goal of enabling Lulu authors to sell eBooks in every online marketplace.  Meanwhile, we encourage you to get started and publish an eBook today.