Help

The industry requires that your book adhere to its distribution standards, and it is up to you to ensure your book meets the requirements. If your book is submitted to the industry before it meets these requirements, it will be rejected and your book distribution will be delayed while you work to bring your book into compliance. These are the requirements your book must meet prior to distribution:

Distribution Eligibility

• Which books are eligible for Distribution?

Requirements for all book covers

• If you include your retail price on the cover, it must exactly match the retail price you set on your book. Lulu will not add the price to your book cover.
• Keep all text and images at least 0.375" from all sides of the cover. This area may be trimmed off. (This includes .25" bleed area and .125" safety area.) If you are uploading a one-piece cover, use the dimensions found here.
• Keep in mind that B&W 8.5 x 11" books will be printed at 8.25" x 11" through the retail channels, so you may need to increase the distance of any text or images from the edges to take this into account.
• Spine text must be at least .0625" away from all edges of the spine. Text that is too close to the edge of the spine will be reduced in size to fit. (This may result in very small text on the spine of your book.)
• For books with fewer than 80 pages, you cannot have spine text if you are using a one-piece cover.

Additional requirements for one-piece covers

• Cover must have correct 13-digit ISBN/EAN.
• Bar codes must be provided in black and white.
• Bar codes should be 1.833" wide by 1" high.

Requirements for book interiors

• The book description should be between 40 and 1,000 characters; longer descriptions may not be displayed by booksellers.
• Text must be an Adobe distilled PDF. (If you provide your own PDF it must be distilled using Adobe; if you upload a word processing document, Lulu will distill it using Adobe.)
• Embed all fonts (and all font family members used) when distilling your PDF.
• Book Description, Author and Title must use a Latin Character set. We cannot accept Russian, Chinese, Japanese and other non-Latin characters.
• Final page of each book must be completely blank.
• Book must have a Title page.
• Book must have a Copyright page with your correct 13-digit ISBN/EAN and a copyright notice. The Copyright page must come after the Title page.
• Margins must be at least .5" on all sides. Your left margin must be equal to your right margin, and your top margin must be equal to your bottom margin.
• You may add a gutter to your document in addition to your margins. (What does this mean?)
• Page numbering must be correct. No page numbers may be skipped. You can have a page without a page number on it, but it must be counted and consistent.
• All files should be submitted at high-resolution (300 dpi).
• If you intend any page in your book to have color or images that extend to the edge, called full bleed, please format your document according to the full bleed specifications.