A whole gang of Lulus wore pajamas to the office today to encourage all of you to get in your own jammies and take part in Publish in Your Pajamas Week! You still have all weekend to publish in your PJs, send us pictures (we'll try to post some!), and most importantly help out the Pajama Program, a non-profit organization that provides warm pajamas and like-new children's books to underprivileged kids. What are you waiting for?!


Above are Nick, Leah, Annie, Katie, Jackson, and me.

Posted on Friday 09 of September, 2005 [23:10:04 UTC]

At Lulu, we're always working on improving things around here. We keep adding new features, changing old ones, and fixing problems.

That said, sometimes it's hard to keep up with our Help section. We get a lot of complaints that Help is hard to find or understand. That's just not acceptable, so we're going to do something about it!

We would like to know what changes we can make to help you, as a Lulu user, better understand our Help section. Is there something specific that you've always wanted to see in Help? Is there one particular aspect of Help that you have a great idea for improving?

If so, please leave a comment. Keep in mind that this is not an open call for suggestions for new features for the site, although we're always happy to take those via the forums! These suggestions should be constructive (i.e. don't tell us that Help is worthless and then fail to elaborate about why you think it's worthless) and relate only to the Help section. Be as detailed as you can.

Thanks in advance for your Help help!

-Carolyn

Posted on Friday 24 of June, 2005 [19:48:16 UTC]

Don't say we didn't warn you, (because we did!) but as of today, the Lulu Formatting option has been laid to rest. We know that some of you are a bit nervous about the disappearance of this tool, but trust us, it's for the best.

To prove this to you, I've put together a bunch of links to help you start reading up on Lulu's uploading and conversion options. We've added some new help topics to aid in you creating your own tables of contents or better formatting your word processing files.

To learn a little history about the Lulu Formatting option, read Henry's blog entry, Lulu Converters and Dodo Birds.

Jump right in! This is our main help topic about Lulu's options for uploading your book. Make sure you check out all of the subtopics at the bottom of that page. The newly-revamped Formatting a document for PDF is very helpful and was created thanks to some research by our LuluMASTER tinhorn. He also wrote the content for Creating a table of contents, an excellent do-it-yourself replacement for the old Lulu-Formatting table of contents.

Alright, you think you've tried everything but still want somebody to hold your hand a little bit or commiserate about the loss of your old Formatting friend. The Formatting, Uploading and Converting forum is just the place for that! Try the original announcement of its disappearance to get a little empathy from LuluMASTERS.

Don't be shy about posting your own specific help request in the forum. Lulus like Kobus and Monica have already gotten great answers to their questions there! Who knows, you might even become such an expert that you can answer other users' questions and be a forum hero.

If you find some more helpful links throughout the site, please comment on this post! Others will definitely appreciate your input.

Take heart, Lulus... it's not that bad. We know you can do it. Look at it as a new learning opportunity, have fun and keep publishing!

Posted on Wednesday 03 of November, 2004 [21:21:35 UTC]

What an awesome way to spend a Sunday! Since Lulu is one of the sponsors of the Sally Ride Science Festival, Annie, Leah, and I lucked out and got to run a Lulu table at the festival. It was held today at N.C. State University in Raleigh.



We had hundreds of people come by the table who were interested in Lulu and the essay contest we're sponsoring in conjunction with the festival. The grand prize winner will receive a Meade ETX-90EC Astro telescope, and everyone who enters will have her essay published in a book and receive a copy of the book. Here is last year's book. If you would like to learn more details about the essay contest, click this link:

http://www.sallyridefestivals.com/04raleigh1010/LuluEssayContest.pdf

Bob Young introduced Sally Ride before her keynote speech, which was given before a very full house.



Highlights of the festival included, obviously, meeting Sally Ride (who was pretty thrilled about getting a Lulu hat!) and her awesome staff (below is Joe with the Lulu tin we gave him... he remembered Annie and Leah from last year!), as well as observing some pretty cool science activities happening around us all day.



These guys had some pretty great telescopes set up.



I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't take a picture of the small solar-powered vehicles that some of the girls were building in their workshops, because they were VERY cool!

Overall, the science festival was great fun, and I think all of the girls in attendance enjoyed their workshops and the street fair. I can't wait to read the essay submissions for this year... get writing, folks!

Posted on Sunday 10 of October, 2004 [21:54:39 UTC]