uploading a novel

Section 158 Entry 0001. Date: 2005 August 6 Saturday.
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Uploading a novel. This blog entry might conceivably be of interest to someone planning to upload a novel on lulu.com but probably would be of little or no interest to anyone else.

And so now I come to my next challenge: uploading my novel BAMBOO HORSES to the lulu.com site so that, if all goes well, within eight weeks or so it can be available for purchase on amazon.com and similar outlets. At this stage I've made a lulu.com account; I've made a Word document containing the text of the BAMBOO HORSES novel, which, as a Word document, runs to 528 pages (a few of which are blank), and I've made a front cover as a portable network graphics (png) file. I've also decided which of lulu's covers I'll choose as my back cover.

Now I have to see if I can get the process to work.

My main fear at this stage is that my cover may be rejected. Lulu.com specifies a certain minimum number of dots per inch for a png cover, and says that png files which fail to reach this minimum standard will be rejected. I have no idea how many dots per inch my png file is and I don't seem to possess a software tool that will tell me, so maybe my front cover will be rejected. If so, then that's sad, and I'll just choose one of lulu's covers.

Okay, here goes.

Step by step.

Step zero is is a big "Damn!"

I've already messed up, and I haven't even started yet.

And ... damn! I'm at my sister's place, and my sister's gone out to the zoo with her kids, and I've forgotten my power supply, which means that I'm limited to battery life ... unless I go ahead and plug in the power supply for my sister's computer ... a power supply which does not deliver precisely the correct voltage that my ThinkPad is expecting ... here goes ... okay, we have power, and nothing had exploded ... the battery symbol is showing 93% charge ...

Warning to the world: don't plug your computer into a power supply which delivers a voltage that the computer isn't designed to take.

Battery symbol now showing 94% charge ... the computer is running and it's charging.

Step 1. To lulu.com and log on ... and what do I click on here? Browse ... publish ... my account ... services ... community ... help. I'll try "publish".

Step 2. Click on "PUBLISH". Hmmm ... this doesn't seem to be what I want. I'll try "my account".

Step 3. Click on "MY ACCOUNT". Whoops! I somehow forgot to log in. I wrote down "log on" but then didn't do so. Maybe this is just because it's morning and my brain has never worked properly in the morning. Or maybe it's because my brain has been degraded. Or maybe it's because uploading my novel into the world of print on demand is a big adventure with an uncertain outcome and I'm a little stressed about it.

Step 4. Really log on.

Step 5. Wonder what to do next. I'm at "MY ACCOUNT" and I don't see anything that looks relevant. Let's try "Site map", which is http://www.lulu.com/static/sitemap.php.

Step 6. Study "Site map" ... I don't find what I'm looking for. Damn. Under "my account" try "my storefront" ... brings me to the storefront and a message from me to the world which says "As of August 2005 I'm working on BAMBOO HORSES, which should be published soon - a fantasy book with murder mystery elements, or, more precisely, a murder mystery with fantasy elements ... and I'm also working on TO FIND AND WAKE THE DREAMER, the first book in the projected TALES OF OOLONG MORBLOCK series. I hope to have TO FIND AND WAKE THE DREAMER finished some time in 2005."

Step 7. Back to "Site map" and try "Services Market" button called "Publishing Services". "The page you have requested cannot be found."

Step 8. Back to "Site map" and try "Publishing". Ah, this looks hopeful! There are various options including one called "Starting a new project". On the Internet, you're never more than half a dozen clicks away from exactly what it is you want to know. The big question is, however, which half a dozen clicks?

Step 9. Click on "Starting a new project". And it says, in part, "After you log in, click the PUBLISH tab to create and manage your publishing projects. Then, click START A NEW PROJECT to display the Start Project page." Well, I already clicked the "PUBLISH" button but I didn't see anything saying "START A NEW PROJECT". Okay, I'll try again.

Step 10. Click "PUBLISH". Okay ... I guess I didn't look at this carefully enough the first time. Messed up! A day for messing up! Up near the top left corner of the "PUBLISH" page, which is http://www.lulu.com/author/, there is an oval button, color blue, white print on a blue background saying "Start a new project".

Step 11. Click "Start a new project". Okay, now you're cooking with gas! Options include a clickable "Book" with the associated legend "Upload your book to be printed, such as PDF, DOC, RTF, etc."

Step 12. Click on "Book".

Step 13. Complete the form on the "Book" page, which is http://www.lulu.com/author/wizard.php?fSubmitWizardBookDoc=1, and which has fields for various things such as title and description and so forth. The "publisher" field is already filled in with "Cook Hugh" - there is a notation beside this field saying "you are the publisher". Title "Bamboo Horses"; Lulu Category "Books"; Category "Fiction & Literature";

SubCategory ... options include something called "Open Minded Erotica" and "S & M Fiction" ... fantasy comes under the heading "Science Fiction & Fantasy" ... and I'll click "Fantasy".

Description: "A murder mystery with fantasy elements set in the land of Nizon, where people eat with scissors rather than with chopsticks. Fantasy in a modern environment complete with computers and cellphones. Business manager Ken Udamana, a husband and a father of two, believes that someone is planning to murder him and takes a shot at find out who. This novel contains some violence and touches on the subject of an adulterous relationship."

I wrote out the above using my text editor then copied it and pasted it into the window. I figure that the words "Business manager Ken Udamana, a husband and a father of two" cue you to the fact that this is a novel about adult life rather than, say, teenagers with no responsibilities running around waving rather sharp swords at people.

"Copyright Notice" - there's a notation giving an example, "ex. by Lulu Creator" so I've put "by Hugh Cook". "Edition" - first.

Now I come to the "Author" field where my first name has already been entered as "Cook" and the last name as "Hugh", which is the wrong way round, doubtlessly because of some mistake I made when registering details of something or other somewhere on the site. So I'll have to go back later to my account details and check those. For the moment, for both the "Author" and "Publisher" field I'll change "Cook Hugh" to "Hugh Cook".

"Content". Is this book with its "suggestive content" suitable for persons aged 13 or over or does it fall into the "mature themes" part of the spectrum, suitable only for persons aged 17 and older? I don't know. I'm being asked to self censor, which is reasonable enough - to give my book a censorship rating for the purposes of the lulu.com site - and I can't figure out which category applies. So I'll play it safe and I'll label BAMBOO HORSES as "Mature" which means that "Content is only suitable for persons ages 17 and older. May include intense violence and language, and mature sexual themes". This could seriously disappoint someone who is in search of either graphic sex or ultraviolence.

Step 14. Check through the "Book" fields carefully to make sure I haven't messed up.

Step 15. Save and continue. And I see a page which contains the book field info including an ID number, and I'll save this as "book-page" using my screen capture program. That makes certain that I have a correct copy of the ID number even if I make an error transcribing it. The ID number is (and here I copy and paste from the screen) "149684". Now the "Author" is specified as "Cook, Hugh", and I guess this format indicates that "Cook" is being taken, correctly, as being the family name.

Down the bottom there's a gray button with a notation beside it saying "Source file(s)". Actually, there are two gray buttons, one of which says "UPLOAD FILE FROM MY PC".

Step 16. Click on "UPLOAD FILE FROM MY PC". And I come to a screen with a "Browse" button and some writing, including "You use good judgement concerning what kinds of content you place on our site". I think I'm exercising good judgment. I mean, this "Bamboo Horses" book doesn't contain scenese showing George W. Bush having sex with dogs or anything like that. Okay!

Step 17. Use the "Browse" button and navigate to the place on my computer where I have the BAMBOO HORSES text stored as a Word document. Which is "C:\Documents and Settings\hwgc\My Documents\0-2005-current-work\bbh-current-2005\bbh-upload-text-cover\bamboo-horses.doc" ... and:

Step 18. Click "UPLOAD" ... and I see a progress bar ... file upload in progress ... I'm uploading 1,218 Kbytes ... it's not fast but it's not dismally slow either ... message "Your file bamboo-horses.doc has been added to your book successfully" and I have the option of either "UPLOAD ANOTHER" or "DONE".

Step 19. Click "DONE". And now a page I was on earlier shows "bamboo-horses.doc" as having been uploaded on 8/05/2005 at 8:19 PM, which is some American date, it being the 6th of August here in New Zealand rather than the 5th. My options include "BACK" and "SAVE AND CONTINUE".

Step 20. I haven't yet clicked "SAVE AND CONTINUE". There's a little box to the left of the "bamboo-horses.doc" file which looks to me as if I should check it to choose this as my source file, so I click in the box to check it. The book size has already been selected as "6 x 9 (Paperback size)" - that's six inches wide by nine inches tall. Whoops! There's an option which says "ADD CHECKED TO MY FILES" which is something I don't want to do. So I uncheck the Word document.

Step 21. Click "SAVE AND CONTINUE". And I get a screen saying "Your document is converting", showing the "bamboo-horses.doc" as the source document. The conversion takes some time ... no matter, I'm not in a hurry.

Step 22. Damn ... I opened another window to do something else on the computer and now I've lost the "conversion" screen and I have three lulu.com screens open and I'm not sure which one I'm supposed to be working with ... I'l click "SAVE AND CONVERT" again and see what happens. No, wrong! Down at the bottom of the screen where I previously clicked "SAVE AND CONVERT" I see "Conversion Status" and the legend "Your book has been converted successfully" and the message "Click PREVIEW PRINT-READY PDF to preview the print-ready version of your book and then, if you are satisfied with the PDF, click APPROVE & CONTINUE. Click BACK or click one of the tabs above to make changes to your book."

Step 23. Click PREVIEW PRINT-READY PDF (a PDF file being, as I guess most people know, a public document format file, one of those things that can be opened by Adobe's Acrobat Reader or whatever it's called. I click and I get a white screen and an hourglass ... "Adobe Reader 7.0 is trying to access the Internet" says my firewall ... I authorize Adobe Reader to access the Internet ... hard disk activity ... okay, and I now have a Firefox (web browser) screen open with, at the top, a legend saying "http://www.lulu.com - 149684.pdf (application/pdf Object) - Mozilla Firefox". With blankness at the top ... as is to be expected, as I started my Word document with a blank page ... let's scroll down and have a look at this ... ah, legend down the bottom says "1 of 530" ... save a copy ... I don't know if I'm allowed to save my own copy of this PDF but I want to have it on hand ... I thought my Word document ran to 528 pages but the PDF is 530 for some reason ... page count is supposed to divide evenly by four for printing purposes ... 530/4 is 132.5 ... if I'd known the page count was going to get messed up then I wouldn't have bothered fussing to get a Word length that was divisible evenly by four ... okay ... I've had a look at the PDF ... we seem to have an unnecessary number of blank pages at the end, but it's good enough as far as I'm concerned ... but next time out I won't fuss about the page count.

Step 24. Click "APPROVE AND CONTINUE". And I see a screen which tells me "Your content has been successfully uploaded and formatted for printing. Based on the number of pages and the size of your content, the following color and binding options are available." The screen gives me the base price (production cost) in American dollars as $15.15 for black and white (or, for color, $84.03.)

Step 25. Choose Colors "Black and white pages (with color covers).

Step 26. Choose binding (only one option offered in the case of BAMBOO HORSES) "Perfect-bound (soft cover)" tagged as "Bookstore-quality, standard paperback binding. Fits books between 48 and 700 pages."

Step 27. Choose "SAVE & CONTINUE". I now come to the cover image business and the notation "Design your cover art. If you upload your own image, files can be JPG, PNG, or GIF with a minimum resolution of 300dpi."

Step 28. For a back cover, "CHOOSE GALLERY IMAGE" and select the lulu.com back cover of my choice. (Earlier, a few days ago, I downloaded copies of all the covers and looked through them and chose which one I wanted for the back.) I go to the image I want and click "Use as Cover" and the image appears on the screen that shows blanks for my back cover and my front cover. It appears in the rectangle for the back cover.

Step 29. BROWSE to front cover on my computer's hard disk ... and I choose the front cover and click on it and nothing seems to happen ... let's try that again .. no, wait, I have an hourglass on the screen so maybe something's happening ... let's wait and see what happens ... very slow ... I'm going to go away, make a cup of tea and read the newspaper ... message ... damn! ... message says "The width or height of your image are too small. For optimal printing, your images should be saved at 1838 X 2775 pixels, a 6.125" X 9.25" image at 300 DPI. We do not accept cover images that are less than 858 X 1295." And what is my image? ... opening it with Irfan View, it is 488 x 732 x 24.

Step 30. Decision junction. I have the option of uploading one of Lulu's covers, which will not have my name or book title on it, or, on the other hand, of trying to make a new book cover. Of 1838 X 2775 pixels. Let me think about this ... okay, I'll try to make a cover of the optimal 1838 x 2775 pixels and see how I do ...

Step 31. Find my cover in the special png format that is used by the program Microsoft Photo Premium 10 ... I find the file in the folder "bbh-cover" which holds all my trial and error cover-making efforts ... and I find an old png file ... but maybe I'd be better off making one from scratch ... let's see if I can assemble the bits and pieces in a folder called "assemble" ... somewhere I need to find a photo of a fish in a bucket of blood, something which features in the plot of BAMBOO HORSES ... I actually took the photo at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, Japan ... I've assembled the four pieces, the title, my name, the fish photo and a tweaked photo of rocks ... one PNG image, one JGP image and two bitmap images ... now I want a blue background at 1838 x 2775 pixels ... let's try PROGRAMS -> ACCESSORIES -> PAINT ... IMAGE -> ATRRIBUTES ... and I can set pixels here to 1838 x 2775 ... and save this as bbh-cover-1838-2775-bmp.bmp ... then color it blue ... (use "fill with color") ... and save it ... and close Paint ... and have a look at the files as displayed by Windows XP, and the size in pixels is shown on the screen beside the file, 1838 x 2775 ... now, open this bitmap image with Microsoft Photo Premium 10, make a collage of the cover, save it in the special Photo Premium png format, then save it in ordinary png format as a file bbh-optimum-cover.png. To find the bits and pieces, FILE -> GET PICTURE FROM GALLERY -> LOOK ELSEWHERE. And then it's really simple to make the collage, just drag and drop stuff into position then resize it. To make a collage with Microsoft Photo Premium 10, the fact that I'm working with a mishmash of different source file types is no problem. So now I have a file bbh-optimum-cover.jpg which weighs in at a massive 7.87 megabytes. Whether lulu.com will accept it I don't know. Let's try and find out. Note on Microsoft Photo Premium 10: I didn't think I'd have any use of this, but I bought it because it was part of a boxed set which included Word and some other things, and I've found it very easy to use.

Step 32. Having made a new cover with a size of 1838 by 2775 pixels, try to upload this into the "front cover" rectangle using the "BROWSE" button. Browsed to the file, clicked "Open" ... nothing happened to the Lulu.com screen after that so I went and clicked the "UPLOAD" button and was rewarded with an hourglass ... an hourglass happens slowly ... sounds like a good line for a poem: "An hourglass happens slowly / As the radiation residuals / Nag at the scantiness of my hair." (I still, surprisingly, have some hair left. A little hair.) The hourglass persists ... the hair comment, by the way, relates to my recent radiation therapy, in the aftermath of which I was supposed to have experienced total baldness, something which may happen yet, I guess, although if it's going to happen it's being pretty slow about happening ... the houseglass seriously persists, and now I really do sit down to read some of the newspaper ... okay, I think I started this front cover upload at 1410 and it's now 1425 ... and at 1433, as I'm starting to really wonder, my new cover, the new version of the cover that I just made today, arrives in the "front cover" rectangle. Yatta! I did it!

Step 33. SAVE AND CONTINUE. Now I get a screen with an "Edit cover images" option. Cover options ... option checked is "Stretch image to fit cover" ... have to choose font for cover and colors, background and text cover ... default font is Georgia ... CONTROL PANEL -> FONTS ... have a look at Georgia, looks okay to me, an unexceptional font at first blush ... I'm not a font expert ... I want blue for the background and white for the text, to match what I have on the cover ... for the text color I've chosen #FFFFFF which was originally in the "Background Color" box ... and for the background I've chosen "#0000FF" which is a kind of blue ... I can't be sure that it's an exact match for the blue I've got on the cover, but it's close enough not to be startlingly different. Cover options include "Display title on front cover" and "Display author on front cover" which means, at a guess (and this is only a guess) that I could choose a Lulu.com gallery cover and have name and title displayed on it. Spine text is specified as "Bamboo Horses". Now my options are BACK, UPDATE COVER and SAVE AND GENERATE COVER.

Step 34. SAVE AND GENERATE COVER. And now I see a picture of the book displaying front cover, spine and back cover, the back cover on the left (unless I've gone and messed up badly).

Step 35. SAVE AND CONTINUE. See a pricing and royalty screen which has downloads set as a default $0.00. I'm changing this to $4.00. This changes all the other figures, including the figure for the printed book. Let me mess with this a little to get this right. I want a royalty of US $4.00 a copy, which is really high, but I'm figuring this product probably only has a small boutique audience ... that there's a small cadre of people out there who are ready to pay a premium price for this. I set my royalty to $4 and everything on the screen adjusts so a download (PDF download) price is $5 (leaving $1 as Lulu's cut) and a printed book is $20.15, which is pretty high for a paperback book. Availability? Leave as the default "Available to the public". Print details "6.0 x 9.0 in., Perfect-bound, 60# interior paper, black and white interior ink, 100# exterior paper, full-color (CMYK) exterior ink".

Step 36. Click COMPLETE PUBLISH. Now I have some options including upload preview, download Lulu's author's press kit, Buy in bulk at a discount, get free buy now buttons. Also "Purchase ISBN distribution service for your book", which is the one I want ... this is the step which costs money, but which lets the book be sold through amazon.com.

Step 37. Click on "Purchase ISBN distribution service for your book". And there is a choice of a basic distribution service for US $34.95 or the Global Distribution Service, which is the one I want, for $149.95, with Lulu saying "Get your book in prominent online bookstores. Open the doors to leading distribution channels; make your book accessible to large chain and independent booksellers." With this service I can use my own web site to advertize the book and anyone who wants can buy it over amazon.com ... if amazon.com chooses to list it ... and even if it's listed it may take eight weeks to get listed.

Step 38. Click on "PURCHASE GLOBAL SERVICE". See "When you purchase the Global Distribution Service, a copy of your book is automatically added to your shopping cart for your approval in addition to the service. You must purchase, review and approve a copy of your book before it can be entered into global distribution channels." They suggest I preview my book once more before ordering a copy. Okay.

Step 39. Click on "preview your book" ... this takes time ... I'm waiting ... I'm feeling tired ... tomorrow is Sunday, and I think for me it's going to be a day of rest ... I left home to walk round to my sister's place at about 1010 and it's now 1505 ... and at 1506 the PDF file is there on the screen ... unchanged, as far as I can see ... looks fine to me.

Step 40. Click CONTINUE TO CHECKOUT. And they're charging me for $149.95 for the ISBN service plus (no royalty) $15.15 for the book for a total of US $165.10.

Step 41. Click CHECKOUT. And I see an address field, blank apart from "United States".

Step 42. Fill in my current New Zealand address.

Step 43. SAVE AND CONTINUE. And now we come to "Shipping method and estimate" with the cost for shipping. International Economy is $19.31 and takes 10-15 days. International Express is $34.38, roughly US $14 more, and takes 4-8 days. Time is of the essence. I want this out of the way as soon as possible. I'll take the Express.

Step 44. SAVE AND CONTINUE. Get chance to check address.

Step 45. SAVE AND CONTINUE. Enter credit card details including billing address, which of course is an address in Japan. I wondered if I might have a problem because I'm resident in Japan but my credit card letters go to Japan, but, no, no problem, because I was able to enter my New Zealand address when ordering the copy of the book which is going to be delivered to me so I can check and approve it, and I was able to enter, separately, at the credit card stage, my Japanese address. I now see a screen showing my "Shipping to" address in New Zealand, my "Billing Address" in Japan and my "Payment method", with the credit card number already reduced to XXXXXX (several Xs) and a year. I'm buying the global distribution service ("Your book will be assigned an ISBN, will be included in the Books in Print bibliographic database in addition to the Lulu website and will be listed with Ingram Book Company and in the UK through Bertrams and Gartners") plus a copy of the book to check and approve plus paying for shipping, for a grand total of US $199.48, which is doable. That's my total capital investment in this publishing venture.

Step 46. Click PLACE ORDER. See "Printed titles must go through the print-on-demand manufacturing process; they usually ship within 3-4 business days of your order. You will receive an email from Lulu when the item ships. Expect your order to arrive in about a week, plus the shipment time associated with the class of shipping you selected." Also see the ISBN for BAMBOO HORSES, "The ISBN 1-4116-4141-8 has been assigned to your book "Bamboo Horses" and can be found on the back cover of your printed book." Also see "Your book will be listed with major online booksellers within the next six weeks. Your book is now available for sale on Lulu." Also see "Once you have received a copy of your book, if you are satisfied with it, approve it! Simply go to your project list, click the Approve/Deny Book link underneath your ISBN and follow the instructions. NOTE: Be sure your book is exactly as you want it as you will be charged by the printer a hefty fee for every change you make." Also see an option saying "Set separate pricing and royalties for retail booksellers. NOTE: Once you approve your book for expanded distribution, the pricing and royalties cannot be changed. Your Lulu pricing and royalties that you set during the publish process apply only to copies sold on Lulu and can be changed at any time."

Step 47. Click "Set separate pricing and royalties for retail booksellers". And I get a screen saying "Revise: Bamboo Horses". It's not clear to me if it's compulsory to mess with anything here. Okay, the Lulu pricing is already set with my royalty at $4, and the retail price is set at $24.34 with a zero royalty. If I put in my royalty at $4 then the reatil price jumps to a massive $34.38, with Lulu commission at one dollar. I'm not sure if that will be the price the book retails at over amazon.com. Via lulu.com it's $20.l5 but of course there will be shipping on top of that.

Step 48. Upload a preview ... I'll make a preview file as a Word document and see if I can upload that ... okay, I've made a preview file out of Chapter 29 of BAMBOO HORSES and now I'll try and upload that ... first clicked SAVE to save my retail royalty price ... the maximum filesize for a preview is 2MB ... browsed for Word file then clicked UPLOAD PREVIEW ... screen now shows "Preview" as the file "bbh-ch29.doc" ...

Step 49. Check all the data on the screen, bit by bit ... okay, I think I'm done.

Step 50. Click MY ACCOUNT ... wanted to check that my name is right ... can't see anything wrong ... click VIEW MY STOREFRONT ... the BAMBOO HORSES book is there, priced at US $5 for a PDF download at http://people.lulu.com/users/index.php?fHomepage=123384 ...

Step 50. Log out. Wow. I'm wrecked.

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