[FM Discuss] epub covers & issue dates

[Tomi Toivio]

This is interesting, since the Finnish Lulu.com bookstore is in beta...
Actually I am still waiting for the first demo versions of the manuals to
see if they look like you could actually sell them to somebody, which means
that it is too distant from Finland and mail orders take way too much time.
Anyhow I cannot go and tell anybody to buy them before I see them myself.

Also the bookstore is in English, which means that you would have to know
English anyhow to order books, and might even be able to read English
manuals, which makes it kinda questionable if there is a need to have a
Finnish FM at all. And then there are issues with payments, since something
like Paypal maybe not be so common here, and credit cards are not always
set up for international internet payments.

So I don't know if a Lulu.com bookstore would work here, but there are no
local alternatives. Of course Lulu.com is good in the sense that printed
versions of the books are available, I just doubt if so many people would
or even could order them. I am trying to figure out how to do this so that
it works here. It might be that it has to be done via traditional book
publishing routes to make them really available to readers, while Lulu.com
might still be there for random buyers.

Anyhow it has to be taken into account that many people wouldn't or
couldn't read a book on the computer screen at all, so there have to be
printed versions sooner or later.

2012/3/7 Tuukka Hastrup <Tuukka.Hastrup at iki.fi>

> 2012-03-07 00:21, James Simmons kirjoitti:
>
>  The nice thing about the CreateSpace walkthroughs is that they tell you
>> what they don't like about your submission as you make it.  For example,
>> if the interior PDF doesn't have enough gutter, or if an image isn't at
>> least 300 DPI, or if it has layers that need flattening.  You can choose
>> to ignore the complaints if you wish to.  They let you preview the
>> interior pages so you can see *which* images it doesn't like or what the
>> right amount of gutter would look like.  They let you design your book
>> cover interactively and see a preview of what it will look like.  They
>> tell you the minimum price for your book and how much royalty you can
>> expect if you sell it on Amazon and how much if directly from CreateSpace.
>>
>
> Sounds great indeed.
>
>
>  There is no way whatever you come up with for OBJAVI will be as good as
>> what CS has.
>>
>
> Never underestimate the ability of the free software community :-)
>
>
>  It would make more sense to focus on creating a nice EPUB
>> with a Table of Contents page and an easy way to get the cover image in
>> there.  Let me put in some nice metadata too, so I don't have to load
>> the EPUB into Sigil and fix it.
>>
>
> Sounds like reasonable feature requests.
>
>
>  As I mention in my blog post, CS gives you a free ISBN and distribution
>> on Amazon.com, as well as your own Store page which you can customize
>> with your own banner, etc.  It just seems like an all-around better deal
>> than Lulu.
>>
>
> Lulu.com is not the only service that Objavi integrates with even though
> it's one of the first.
>
>         The Lulu fields seem dubious to me too.  I've never published to
>>        Lulu,
>>        but I have done to CreateSpace and I like that CS walks you
>>        through the
>>        process of publishing your book, instead of asking for every
>>        possible
>>        piece of info up front before you really know what you're doing.  I
>>        assume that Lulu does much the same thing, and I cannot imagine
>>        why you
>>        would not want to do it that way.  I have four books on CS and
>>        I'll do
>>        the walk-you-through on the fifth if there is one.
>>
>>
>>    Fortunately, Booktype seems to be developing similar walk-throughs
>>    as we speak. :-) This should make the combined power of these
>>    services more apparent and seamless.
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Best Regards
Tomi Toivio
Open Source Coordinator
http://fi.flossmanuals.net/
tomi at flossmanuals.net
+358445488856
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