Publication Help Request · 12:45am Jun 15th, 2019
First off, please vote in this survey this weekend, so book authors like me know what to expect at Bronycon!
My motivation is still in the recovery phase, so I could really use some help. I'm planning to publish my books for BC on Lulu, but I dunno what I'm doing. That means there are questions!
0) How do I format things for Lulu? Is a PDF okay or do they expect something different? The website isn't clear before you place an order as far as I can tell.
1) If so, can I just set Google Docs to do this, say by choosing: GFS Didot 11 pt. on 5.5" by 8.5" with 0.5" margins, then export to PDF?
2) Do you disagree with that format (font, width, margins) or have a better one to recommend?
3) Should I use something like Ponyfeather Publishing to do this, or is it way too late for that?
4) Illustrations: should I rush and find some, or not care? I'll need one for the cover of BS at least (not 100% on if I'm publishing that one yet), but all else is optional.
5) When do I need all this horseshit done by if I want it printed and shipped before BronyCon?
It is still psychologically hard for me to do the legwork myself, so advice on any of this would be awesome. 
Why's Twilight Sparkle saying she's Twilight Sparkle? I don't get it.
PM Georg, Trick! He's done this a good bit and posted a few blogs about it. Ok sure he'd been quite willing to help!
Short answer: No, you're not too late to bring a book to Bronycon. Probably getting to the "Too late" stage to list it on the survey you just posted, though.
Now, is it easy? Yes and no. Lulu will print about anything that's in PDF format with a cover that fits. If I've got a prepared PDF and a JPG of the right dimensions, I can hit up the site and have a book headed in my direction (for about $8 and $4 shipping) in a matter of minutes. Then a day or two for it to make through the print queue, a day or to for UPS to truck it around the country, and Book! shows up on my doorstep.
I've done a post on how to do just that. Then I decided to test my theory and see how easy it would be to produce a 2-volume printing of Monster in the Twilight/Letters From a Little Princess Monster with practical notes for the reader to see how it gets done.
So yes, it can be done.
5074318
I'm already in the survey, Georg, so no worries there. Thanks for the information!
Is there a way to get books to people online in a POD manner without me doing shipping, I wonder? Is that what Ponyfeather does? I looked at their interface, but it does not seem to support print sales yet.
I can still use other advice if anypony else has some, including particular stuff you'd like to see w.r.t. the format or whatever else.
5074321 Yes, your Lulu project has three options:
1 - Me only
2 - Me and anybody I share my link with
3 - Any human being on the planet who visits the Lulu site
The exact legality of putting my stories on #3 without going through all the hoops associated with publication including getting an ISBN number and making sure the printed copy matches all the requirements of being listed... I'm just going to shift my collection to #2 after Bronycon and publicize the link if anybody wants to buy direct POD.
If you look on their site, there are example files to download. I believe they were MSWord .docx's. I think they take pdf too. Also there are specific formatting rules, ie, total number of pages needs to be divisible by 4 (or something) and the first page is actually the second, bc the first is the inside of the front cover, etc.
It's all new to me as well.
0. They expect a PDF for the interior and a PDF or image file for the cover. (Image files seem to get compressed during the conversion to PDF for the cover, so giving them a PDF to begin with is preferable.)
1&2. Unless what you plan to print is very long, a 6x9 book is going to be a much more pleasant and "normal" reading experience than a letter-sized book. Lulu provides downloads of interior and cover templates for every book format they offer, on the page where you select the book format and then plug in a page count to get a price calculated.
3. It is both too late for this and not an option anyway, because working with PFP is by invitation, like the Vault/RCL. (Regarding 5074321, after BronyCon, all PFP titles will get hardcover and softcover purchasing links added to the area where download links currently exist. These will take the prospective buyer to the books' Lulu pages, which will be on the 2nd setting Georg mentions to ensure they're not discoverable by accident while browsing Lulu's catalog. Lulu will handle ordering, payment processing, and shipping.)
4. If you mean interior illustrations, note that they need to look good in grayscale. Lulu can't mix and match color and B&W interior pages -- the whole book has to be one or the other. Color interiors are much more expensive and a less pleasant reading experience (bright white paper vs. cream paper).
5. Aquaman's deadline for ordering your bookstore inventory and sending him the invoice and PDF print proof(s) to prove the books actually exist and will be there in time is July 7th. It takes a few minutes to upload your book into Lulu's system, but once it's there you can order prints of it immediately. If you want to be safe, get your interior PDF and exterior cover art file done by the 6th, in case you have any technical difficulty with the upload/ordering.
5074540
Thanks for all the excellent advice!
I'm sorry for asking about PFP. Now I feel stupid and I'm embarrassed.
I was planning on standard black-and-white, but it sounds like you are also suggesting that cream paper is a "more pleasant reading experience" than bright white paper, which is a separate option for black-and-white. I don't understand this. Most of the books I read use white paper, not cream, and I think it looks much nicer (and is easier to read, due to contrast). Why do you feel white paper is less pleasant?
5074661
No need apology necessary, and don't feel bad! I just wanted to clarify how PFP works for you and anyone else reading this comment chain. All the work that goes into producing a books is, well, a lot of work, and it's just something I'm doing for fun in my free time, not a job or for-hire thing, and it's less stressful for me to approach authors than to have to constantly be turning people down, you know?
I'm sure to some degree this will come down to personal preference. I think cream paper is easier on the eyes because it's not as starkly bright, and it feels more like a "real book" and less like something I ran off on laserjet paper.
Looking through my bookshelves, I'm having trouble finding any fiction (or even creative nonfiction) printed on bright white paper; it seems like it's more used for textbooks or reference materials. A different reading experience, IMO. Also, to be clear, Lulu's "cream" is still very light/white; you're right that bright white will have more contrast with the black ink, but I don't know that it's that much more.
I'm expecting delivery of some test prints from Lulu on cream paper in a few days; I could send you some pictures when they get in if you want to see what it's like.
5074777
Maybe you should explain that on your website, then. Right now it looks like you're open for submissions via contact, and the About page doesn't explain how you are selecting your pony fiction. You might want to add a note to the Contact page as well.
What you're saying is consistent with what Lulu says. That said, I have a dozen brony author books at home and every one of them uses white pages. Oroboro, Vivid Syntax, iisaw, Jonathan Greenback, The Abyss... all of them used white. My nonpony creative nonfiction comes in a mixture of the two colors, and I don't read a lot of nonpony fiction (hence my naivete).
I've always confused "cream paper" with "cheap paper" because it's so common with paperbacks and seems to yellow more with age. I never realized it was intentionally that color. I think I have to agree with the other self-published authors I know and stick with white, even though it's probably weird.
Thanks again for all the advice and assistance.
5074805
I'm open for suggestions, certainly, in case I'm missing out on some amazing publication-quality novels. I'll think about how to clarify the language.
Interesting; do you have the casewrap or dust-jacket version? iisaw used cream paper in the dust-jacket edition.
You bet! Good luck!
5075022
His casewrap books use white pages and his dust jacket books use cream.
As luck would have it, I have three of his books in case wrap and (regrettably) one in dust jacket, so I can compare them. Cream isn't as dark as I thought it might be, assuming iisaw used Lulu for this. I'm not entirely sure which color I like better, or if it even matters. When somepony is reading a good book I'd expect that detail would fade into the background entirely, so I'm still leaning toward white, though I'm not certain yet.
I'm also not sure why dust jacket books cost more than casewrap. I much prefer the latter because the dust jacket just gets in the way when you're reading, and when you remove it the book is unadorned. My husband hates dust jackets too—he always throws them away.
I'm probably making fiction-reading purists roll in their graves or something. It's all new to me.
5075527
He did!
I suspect because it's more expensive to print and fold a dust jacket, bind the book itself in cloth, and stamp the title on the spine than to just bind the book in printed paper.
Yeah, casewrap vs. dust cover definitely comes down to personal preference. Personally, I think they make a book look like something cheap for little kids (probably because the only "real" casewrap books I've ever owned were things like The Hardy Boys), and I like being able to use the flaps of a dust jacket as a bookmark.
I missed this when it was new, but I'll just say that I started from one of Lulu's 6x9 softcover template documents, did the whole thing in Word, and I have very close to zero regrets. The whole techno-wizardry aspect of the publishing process threw me for the longest time, until Georg hit me with the above barebones and simple approach to just getting the effin' thing out the door.
My one sorta-regret relates to a text message conversation that one of my stories contains, which I attempted to render with the appearance of an actual text conversation in speech bubbles. It looks great in my Word doc, but Lulu chokes on the PDF export. So I gave Lulu the raw Word doc, which converted perfectly--except for the shape of the speech bubbles. It's far from bad (and I'm planning to just live with it), but it falls several hairs short of perfect.