Ebook

CREATION GUIDE

Copyright © 2018 Lulu Press

All rights reserved

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0

To view a copy of this license, visit

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc/4.0/

4EBOOK CREATION GUIDE LULU AND EBOOKS

Lulu is a company committed to helping you sell more books and reach

idea, Lulu empowers authors, publishers, educators, and businesses to bring

knowledge and expertise to readers more easily than ever before. You can

range of Lulu services for help. Through our Internet retail site, retail partners,

and global print network Lulu has created a one-stop shop for the ultimate in

prot or more when your work sells.

You are the new face of publishing and you are in control.

Barnes & Noble’s NOOK, Android tablets, and your home computer. Millions

Once you have read and followed these guidelines for preparing your manu-

script, the Lulu EPUB Converter can be used to create an ebook in EPUB le

format. These guidelines do not guarantee success on your rst conversion

attempt, but by following these instructions, your chances of success are

5EBOOK CREATION GUIDE LULU AND EBOOKS

As a Lulu author, your ebooks (EPUB and PDF) can be published and oered

for sale in the Lulu Marketplace at no cost to you.

Authors with bigger ambitions can assign an International Standard Book

Number (ISBN) to their ebook (EPUB) making it eligible for distribution to

NOT PROOFREAD OR REVIEW YOUR CONTENT; however, we must ensure

your work meets the technical quality controls required by our distribution

partners. This review focuses on compliance with distribution guidelines as

well as the technical aspects of your work, such as the le size, title, descrip-

tion, categorization, image quality, and table of contents functionality. For

more information about ebook distribution requirements, see ebook Retail

Distribution Guidelines.

If there are any problems detected during the technical review, you will receive

an email listing the areas that require updating. Once you have addressed

these issues, you may resubmit your work for a follow up review. If your work

6EBOOK CREATION GUIDE SUPPORTED SOURCE FILES

must be saved as a properly formatted DOC, DOCX, RTF, or ODT le.

Word, please reference the Help les specic to the version within which you

created your manuscript.

Most popular word processing programs support saving your le in Rich Text

Format (RTF). You can upload an RTF le to our converter and we will convert it

into an EPUB le.

Since there are many programs that support saving documents in RTF format,

we cannot provide comprehensive instructions for each editor. However, most

programs include MS Word-like menus and features, similar to those discussed

within this guide. As long as your editor supports applying style based format-

ting, you can adapt the MS Word formatting instructions discussed in the

following chapters to prepare your RTF le for conversion to EPUB. Our

converter will catch many common mistakes and x them for you or provide

warnings so you can make adjustments to the RTF le to ensure it will look

great as an ebook.

7EBOOK CREATION GUIDE SUPPORTED SOURCE FILES

You can use any program, editor, or online tool capable of saving your work in

Rich Text Format (RTF), as long as it supports applying RTF style sheets. This

includes Google Docs, OpenOce, and many others.

Bare-bones text editors like Notepad (PC) and TextEdit (Mac) do not produce

RTFs with style-based formatting and are therefore not suitable programs for

use when preparing your le for conversion to EPUB on Lulu.

8EBOOK CREATION GUIDE FORMAT IS AS IMPORTANT AS GRAMMAR

rewriting, ensuring your spelling was correct, your subjects and verbs agreed,

and that your work had a consistent voice. Now, you should spend a little time

making sure it is consistently formatted.

In general, word processing programs provide two methods for formatting text

ple of Direct Formatting. While the Lulu EPUB Converter maintains this type

of formatting, it cannot identify it as a new chapter. Other examples of direct

formatting include creating indents using tabs or the space bar, or insert-

ing additional spaces between paragraphs using the Enter key. Our converter

manually entered paragraph spacing) from your document during conversion.

graph. If the whole paragraph needs to be formatted uniquely, you should

Open your document and click File > Save As. Give your document a new

name, such as The Greatest Book Ever Backup Copy and save. Of course you

Click the Paragraph (or Pilcrow) button to display all non-printing characters.

When this option is selected, you can more easily locate and correct Direct

Formatting issues such as extra tabs, spaces, and incorrect paragraph spacing.

Go to Review > Track Changes and set to O. If previous changes or comments

are displayed in your document, accept the edits and switch from Markup

AutoCorrect and AutoFormat features make changes to your document based

on changes you make to selected text. Deactivate these features so that they

do not undo assigned formatting styles.

1. Click the Microso Oce button or File in the toolbar and select Options.

2. In the Word Options box, select Proong and click the AutoCorrect

Replace as you type > “Straight quotes” with “smart quotes.” Smart, or

curly quotes, give your print and ebooks a more professional look.

1. On the Tools menu, select AutoCorrect.

2. Deselect the Automatically correct spelling and formatting as you type

check box.

If you’ve been ‘speed reading’, slow down. This chapter is critical if you want to

distribute your ebook beyond Lulu.com.

We have attempted to keep the technical details of converting your manu-

script to an EPUB to a minimum, but sometimes details can’t be avoided and in

we reference the “EPUB Table of Contents.” In technical terms, this refers to a

component in the EPUB called the NCX le.

Video Tutorial: How to Publish an Ebook with the Best Table of Contents

E-Reading devices utilize the navigation functions built into an EPUB le to

move around the ebook. This navigation is specied in the Navigation Control

le for XML (NCX). An NCX with multiple chapters is required to distribute your

ebook to our retail distribution partners. Lulu’s EPUB Converter will create the

Now that you know about the technology, we will simply refer to the NCX le

as the EPUB Table of Contents (TOC) from this point forward.

Our converter scans your document for Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading

3 styles and creates an entry in the EPUB Table of Contents (TOC) each time

one of these styles is used. Since an electronic TOC will be generated for your

ebook, you should remove any TOC pages from your manuscript prior to

hyperlinks will not function following conversion; therefore if you plan to

numbers – since ebooks do not have pages in the traditional sense.

Our retail distribution partners require you to provide a way for readers to

For Example, let’s assume your book has a few main sections (Title Page,

Copyright, Preface, Body, Epilogue) and a number of chapters, some of which

contain sub chapters or subsections. Your EPUB TOC will therefore consist of

three levels:

1. Apply Heading 1 style to the Title and to each line containing a Section

Heading 5) to denote chapter or section breaks, as these will not generate

retail distribution partners will reject your ebook.

headings such as this sequence 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3: however you cannot

One of the top 10 reasons ebooks are rejected for distribution is an incom-

plete table of contents. Following the conversion of your manuscript to EPUB

format, your ebook table of contents will be displayed. Please conrm all

The rst pages of a book set the professional tone for your readers and will

make or break your ability to achieve distribution through our retail distribu-

before your title. Therefore, your title must be on the very rst line of the

manuscript and be formatted as Heading 1 style. This allows the Lulu EPUB

entered in the manuscript’s properties le will display in the TOC. If the proper-

ties lename is blank, the converter will display the title as “untitled” in the TOC.

On the Copyright page, you should include the year the work was created

followed by your book’s ISBN (International Standardized Book Number). If

your book does not have an ISBN, Lulu can assign one for you in the Wizard.

in the Wizard. You will also want to reference the copyright license, which lets

Example copyright text is included below. You can adapt this text for your

own use or use the format from any published book on your bookshelf as a

template. Just be sure to replace the pertinent information with information

specic to your work:

Copyright © <Year of Publication> by <Your Name>

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced

or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of

the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or schol-

First Printing: <Year of rst printing>

ISBN <Enter your ISBN>

www.<Your Internet Address>.com

EBooks use chapter links to navigate to specic sections or chapters; there-

fore, it is not necessary to include a traditional Table of Contents (TOC) in your

purposes you choose to include a TOC, you should remove the page numbers

since ebooks do not have pages and the numbers will be misleading to

To make your book an enjoyable reading experience, you should choose a

single method for visually separating paragraphs. There are two common

use rst line indent while most non-ction works use block paragraph style.

Of course, there are exceptions, so you must choose what works best for

your book.

21EBOOK CREATION GUIDE FORMAT YOUR MANUSCRIPT FOR CONVERSION

A nod was the answer.

you by my perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange:

I heard yesterday you had some thoughts—“

The ‘walk in’ was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, ‘Go

to the Deuce:’ even the gate over which he leaned manifested no sympathiz-

ing movement to the words; and I think that circumstance determined me to

accept the invitation: I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggerat-

edly reserved than myself.

Lulu’s forums help build a strong community of creators by fostering discus-

Posting to the forums constitutes your agreement to the terms outlined in our

helping other users in the Lulu forums, all members and moderators deserve

your courtesy as much as we feel you deserve theirs. While we’re the rst to

admit we’re not perfect, we strive to be impartial and conduct ourselves in the

text style to automatically apply these settings to your paragraphs.

1. In the Styles menu, right-click on Normal.

2. Select Modify from the resulting list.

3. Click the Modify button (bottom le corner of the Modify Style window)

and choose Paragraph from the resulting list.

1. Under Indentation, select 0 inches for both Le and Right margins

2. Select None from the Special drop down list.

3. Under Spacing enter 0pt in the Above eld and your choice for spac-

ing in the Below eld. Try to keep your paragraph spacing between 4

2. Enter the amount of indentation you prefer in the By eld. You should

keep your indent between .25 and .3 inches.

3. Under Spacing, enter 0pt in the Before and Aer elds.

4. The Preview panel displays sample text as it will appear in your le.

5. Click OK to accept your modications.

There are times when you want to add a little “air” to your work, so now is

your chance. The Lulu EPUB Converter will convert most formatting like bold,

aer conversion.

Always use Times New Roman, Arial, or Garamond fonts when creating your

document. Any other fonts detected during conversion will be converted

to Times New Roman. When applying styles to your document, be sure to

change the default font to a supported font. You must do this for each style

(i.e. “Cambria”).

There may be paragraphs in your le that use a hard-coded default Style such

as Cambria or another unsupported font. Ensure all Styles used in your docu-

1. Right-click on the Style in the styles menu and select Modify.

2. Under Formatting, select a supported font (Arial, Times New Roman, or

3. Check Automatically update to update all instances of this style in your

manuscript to the new setting.

4. Click OK.

5. Repeat for all other styles in your manuscript (i.e. Normal, Heading 2,

Heading 3, etc.).

distribution partners. If your document contains images, you may need to

make a few adjustments in order for them to convert properly. We accept the

cate balancing act since your image must have a resolution high enough to be

clear and crisp, but not so high that it is too large. Try to keep the resolution on

pixels. To prevent rejection, we suggest you make adjustments to images

1. Place your cursor in the location at which you would like your image

2. From the toolbar, click Insert > Picture. Be sure you are inserting the

image, not linking to it.

3. The selected image displays in the cursor location.

4. Click on the image and select Format Image.

5. Choose the In line with text option.

6. Click Save.

7. Click on the image and click Center in the toolbar.

text regardless of the settings you apply prior to conversion.

We recommend using the default styles. Editing or creating unique styles

can cause problems. However, once you become accustomed to using styles,

creating a new style may be easier than repeatedly applying direct (inline)

3. Enter a descriptive name such as Copyright Text, Hanging Indent, Note

Format, Figure Title, etc.

4. If your new style is similar to an existing style, choose the Style Type,

6. Add or remove paragraph spacing as necessary. Figure 7: Create a New

Style Window

8. Click OK.

want. Make adjustments as necessary.

iPad or Nook Tablet. It can also be a bit annoying if a reader accidentally clicks

1. Highlight the text to which you want to add a hyperlink.

onto an e-reader device.

Do NOT attempt to x and re-upload the EPUB le we generated for you. Many

EPUB editors introduce “helpful” elements that will cause errors in the ebook

Lulu handle the conversion. This will produce the cleanest EPUB.