Questions
I’ll be on vacation, beginning Monday and won’t return until the 16th. In the meantime, I have a couple of questions for you. Please feel free to post a comment (which may be held in moderation if you haven’t commented before) or click the Contact Me link in the sidebar. Here goes.
1. What is the [...]
Uploading Your Book to Lulu
The next step is uploading your files onto the Lulu platform. Things have changed since I chronicled my publishing experience last year. Lulu is constantly adding new features to improve their users’ experiences.
As I said in my previous post, you can opt to upload each chapter for conversion. They’ve updated their software so you [...]
Pulling Your Book Together
Lulu allows you to upload files individually for conversion or as one PDF file. But first, you’ll need to organize your book’s sections so they’ll be reader friendly. I’ve included layouts for fiction and non-fiction books as guidelines.
Fiction
1. Review page(s)
2. Published book page (if this isn’t your first book)
3. Title page
4. Copyright page
5. Dedication page [...]
Top 10 Places to Find Free Images for Your Books
1. Stock.xchng: Contains over 200,000 royalty free photos, plus tutorials to learn how to spiff them up.
2. Flickr: Some people offer their photos for public use. Be sure to check their usage terms first.
3. Buzznet: Like Flickr, some of the photos stored on this site may have restrictions.
4. PD Photo.org: This [...]
Obtaining an LCCN Number for Your Book
Is it necessary to obtain an LCCN Number to publish your book through Lulu? No, it isn’t. But if you want to sell your books to libraries, then you’ll need to get one.
Self-published books, as a general rule, are ineligible because the PCN (Preassigned Control Number) program is reserved for books that will be [...]
Is There a Standard Format for Copyright Pages?
Yes, although the wording varies. The name and address of the publisher comes first, followed by the copyright owner, the ISBN number, the legal verbiage, and the copyrights/acknowledgments for the book designer and any artwork or music lyrics used.
Legal Verbiage for Fiction
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any [...]
Hiring a Book Designer
If the learning curve of designing your book is too daunting, hire a professional. Fees for professional book design range from $250 - $5,000. That’s quite a spread.
Professional designers discourage authors from hiring designers who charge cheap fees. The big reason is that these junior designers make printing mistakes that the pros have to [...]
Designing Your Book Cover
Should you design your own book cover or have someone else do it for you? This is a critical question because we all judge books by their covers. The biggest and first mistake POD and self-published authors make is trying to design their own covers when they have little or no design knowledge.
To gain [...]
The Final Layout Procedure
This is where I screwed up when publishing the anthology. Lulu requires your page count to be divisble by four. Not a problem, I thought. I’ll just add a couple of pages to the back and one to the front to get the right number.
I succeeded with that, but the layout wasn’t what I had [...]
Planning the Layout of Your Body Text
For novels, this is very simple and straightforward. You’ll want to justify the paragraphs with the last line aligned left. Set the first line indent a .3. In typing class and on the job, I was taught to set the indents at .5, but with novels that’s too wide of an indent.
For this main [...]
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