Understanding Lulu

I'm getting there with Lulu.com. The publishing process is relatively painless. It enables me to get 'the alpha to omega' in print and in Amazon and B&N for less then eighty quid/ 160 dollars.

Moderate proficiency with Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop and Microsoft Word and a PDF creating software (I use CutePDF, but any would do) was all that was required. That and some painstaking proofreading. A tip there, for anyone interested. If you save a Word document as a PDF and then in the PDF application click read aloud (in Acrobat, thats under VIEW, for some strange reason), the programme will literally read aloud the entire document in an extremely monotonous American voice. Following as it reads, those pesky, read-them-a hundred-times-and-never-noticed-glitches become apparent. (Reading aloud always catches errors that sight reading misses, as our brain is designed to recognise what it thinks should be there...)

I'm now waiting for the proof copy to be printed and sent to me, and for the ISBN number to arrive from the ISBN agency in the UK. Lulu should then automatically produce a barcode .gif for me to upload onto the existing back cover and Bob's your auntie's live in lover.

So, 80 quid for the barcode info and a distribution package including direct sales through Lulu.com, Amazon.co.uk and .com and Barnes&Nobel.com, amongst others. Also 5 quid for my own review copy, to check print quality etc.

Now it's over to you. Order information will be placed on my site www.scottlangston.org as soon as it is available, along with links to the major online retailers. I'll also send an emailing to readers who bought 'IS'.