Print Copy Sample from Lulu

I ordered another one on Monday, August 13th at 8:32pm. I got a note on Monday, August 20th at 8:48pm that it had been shipped. It arrived on Monday, August 27th.

Here is the second version of my Lulu book. Again, the changes with this book were that I increased the font size to 11 point, and I fixed the left-right paging so that was done properly :) For the cover, I adjusted the cover image to have a red dress for more contrast, lightened the back cover so it was easier to read the letters, and I made the title letters slightly smaller so they did not get so near to the edge of the paper.

Ironically, their printing was slightly off on the cover, so the letters still did push towards the right hand side, and the spine wasn't quite centered :)

So first, the covers. On the left is the Lulu book, and on the right is a CafePress book I did. You can see the Lulu book appears professional although it is as mentioned a bit tight on the right hand side.

You can see on the spine how there's a bit of "back cover" showing on the edge of the spine. Also, the pre-built spine with a single color background doesn't look nearly as nice as the CafePress "full color spine" (on the right). While it's a royal pain to design a full wrap cover, I will be doing that for my third run from Lulu because it really does look much nicer. Also, hopefully with a background that matches the front and back cover, it won't be nearly as obvious when lulu gets the centering off a bit.

Here are the back covers with Lulu on the left and CafePress on the right. Lulu puts the UPC code on for you. CafePress does not. Big points to Lulu for this!

On the inside, CafePress gets points for having a nice contrast paper. For some reason Lulu uses a crisp white paper which isn't great on the eyes when you're reading long stretches of words. You would think Lulu would offer a creamier color that's easier to read.

The font size is good - the only changes I now need to make to the inside is to get the page numbers to be exactly at the edge of the paper, which is a Word setting. Also, I didn't fully justify left-to-right my text. I thought it was easier to read this way, but others have pointed out to me that all books pretty much justify left to right, so I will do that on my next run.

Lulu Print Quality - Book #3

Promoting your Lulu Book

Badge of Honor Take a look at the Badge of Honor sales page in Lulu, to get a sense of what the final product looks like. Badge of Honor at Lulu.com

Publishing On Demand Step By Step - Lulu
Lulu Self Publishing - Setting Up the Book
Formatting your Book for Self Publishing
Creating a Lulu Covers

Quality of Lulu Books
Print Copy Sample from Lulu #1
Print Copy Sample from Lulu #2
Print Copy Sample from Lulu #3

Promoting your Lulu Book
Problems and Issues with Lulu

Lulu Self Publishing Main Page
Getting Your Book Published
Writing Tips and Online Books

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