Publishing a book on Lulu

I published my most recent book "Clever Algorithms" using Lulu. The process meet my expectations and I cannot be happier with how the whole process unfolded.

I thought it best to capture some of my notes and findings before I forget them completely. I do intend to write and publish more books in the future, and I will more than likely use Lulu for the process.

To get started, I bought two books from Lulu with the same general market as my book. I wanted to get a feeling for the quality of the printing, the feel of the paper, the clarity of the cover images, and generally a feel for the publisher themselves. I purchased:

• A Field Guide to Genetic Programming, by Poli, Langdon, McPhee, 2008 (sales rank 368)
• Essentials of Metaheuristics, by Luke, 2010 (sales rank 25,727)

The first book on Genetic Programming was very close fit for what I was trying to achieve. They provided a free PDF version of their book on Lulu, and priced their paperback low. Also the form-factor matched what I wanted for Clever Algorithms (6x9 inches).

The second book also had a similar model, providing a free PDF on a separate webpage and a modestly priced paperback. Interesting, Luke chose a USLetter form-factor for the book, likely keeping with the "course notes" intention of the text. Also, the paper quality was better, where Luke seemed to have chosen a whiter white rather than the default beige.

I thought both paperbacks were well made, the binding was solid, the books held together nicely. Most importantly the text was clearly presented.

For the cover, I chose 99Designs. I chose to go with US Trade 6x9 inch sized cover and provided templates for the front and back covers as well as the one piece. I bashed out a brief with some help from a friend and spent a lot of time over the course of the ~7 day competition discussion my expectations designers and providing detailed feedback on candidate designs. Eventually, I selected a top 8-10 designs and posted a message to the MachineLearning reddit (as well as friends and colleagues) in order to tender votes (you can still see all the finalists up there). Ultimately I went with my gut and picked what I thought was the most complete and suitable design.

Once I had a cover, I printed a proof copy of the book even though the copy was not finalized. I ended up printing 2 or 3 proof copies to get the cover size, spine size and barcode perfect. I found some articles on the Lulu support website useful during this process, answering the general questions I had such as:

• Will my ISBN barcode be automatically generated on my one-piece cover?
• Tips for creating your one-piece cover PDF
• What dimensions should my book cover images have?
• PDF Creation Settings (How can I be sure my PDF will print correctly?)
• Mandatory Requirements for Distribution

Lulu provided the ISBN and I used another program to generate the barcode image. I then used GIMP or Photoshop to add the barcode to the one-piece cover image and convert it to PDF.

I prepared all my book content in LaTex (available under Creative Commons on github). The PDF created by my LaTex Makefile did not pass the Lulu checks. I think I had some embedded fonts inside some GNUPlot images. I simply used the command line too ps2pdf13 to embed all fonts into the PDF.

Finally, I purchased a distribution deal to release the book on Amazon and to make it available to traditional book stores. This and availability on Google Books are still pending, but should come through soon enough.

One area of weakness has been eBook format. I didn't consider it, and in fact, I still don't think reading my book on a Kindle or an iPad is appropriate - it's a reference text. I need to think about this area, maybe even get a device and start paying around before I make up my mind.

All in all, I've had a very positive experience. If I could change one thing, it would be the Lulu sites ability to report on the number of PDF downloads. I know there must have been many thousands of downloads, but I can only speculate - I'd love some hard numbers.