why, it’s my Amazon Affiliates widget!

Introduction

There are two companies online that I like a lot (love?) and will always patronize (as long as they stick to their formula); Amazon.com and Newegg.com. Put simply, the prices are great, I’ve never had an issue, what I order shows up fast, and, when I need it, the customer service is great (Newegg’s service is off-the-charts great). As such, I also give them respect on here and by word-of-mouth.

Someone clued me into the whole Amazon Affiliates program where you advertise books you like from Amazon on your site. Since I wanted SOME kind of monetization and I like to show my support for things I really like, it seemed like the perfect combination. I think, however, it requires a bit of explanation so you don’t think that those are just random books. I actually picked them out and read them myself and now I think you should do the same.

I’m a newbie so what’s in it for me?

So, let’s say you’re a bit web savvy and let’s say you’ve got a lot to say so let’s say you start yourself a little blog. You start off slowly, write a few posts, get some momentum and now you want to see what you can do about raking in the dough.You get to researching blog advertisements and, BAM, too much information.

I don’t think you can go wrong with the Amazon widget, to be honest. Pick books that match your content, pick books you support and why wouldn’t people click on the links? I think it’s honest, it’s up-front, you can support something you agree with, and their widgets look great.

I’ll report back when I’ve retired off of the revenue and tell you how to do the same.

So what’s so great about those books?

In the spirit of being honest, I thought I might put a little review on here of each to prove that I ACTUALLY own these books and ACTUALLY read them (well, you don’t so much read a CSS guide or an Illustrator book.. I did read the XHTML one though). Here’s why I like them (I’m posting these on Amazon as well)…

The Elements of Style (Illustrated) by Strunk, White, and Kalman

I wish I could remember who originally recommended the original Strunk & White Elements of Style to me. If I could remember, I would find them and hug them unabashedly.

If you’re writing ANYTHING and care AT ALL about how it turns out then do yourself a favor and pick this one up. The organization is very strange (there isn’t any to speak of) and the writing style is very direct. The result is a no-nonsense book that teaches you to cut the crap out of your writing.

There are many, many valuable lessons contained in Strunk’s short and useful guide but the best ones, for me, are the ones regarding comma usage and his favorite command, “Omit needless words.” During everything I’ve ever written since reading this book I’ve heard a disembodied voice telling me to remove words. I’ve noticed while editing other people’s work that the piece can be improved dramatically by deleting all the words that say nothing.

It’s a quick read but a necessary one for anyone doing any kind of writing.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

As with “Elements…,” I’m not sure how I heard about this book. It was one of those odd series of events that ends with something in your mailbox. I read a few quick things about it online and suddenly decided that I must read the book. I’m glad I did because this was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in a long time.

Anne has a casual but polished writing style that you can’t help but to get lost in. She writes like a close friend speaks to you, eschewing ego and pretentiousness to deliver her simple, personal message. It started out a  bit slow but the stories she told were very entertaining. By the time I reached the middle of the book, I was totally hooked and found the last half hilarious and very informative.

This book is, in the end, a guide on how to be a writer, not a guide on how to write. What I mean by that is you won’t really develop your style or improve your sentence structure by reading this book. What you will do, however, is come to terms with a lot of the obstacles facing writers at every stage of their careers. Her humor and her honesty makes you feel really good about contributing, failing, hating yourself, and moving on.

Though I would definitely recommend this book to anyone writing their own book, I would recommend it even more to anyone living in this world and doing the best that they can. She talks a lot about failing and self-hatred and giving up and charging through. I found myself particularly centered after reading about her embarrassing reactions and consequent success over jealousy and writer’s block. I learned more about my life and myself than I did about writing. I don’t necessarily consider myself a writer but I explore my creativity in different ways and this book really speaks to all of them.

Pick this book up, read it, and feel better about just being yourself.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Finally, a book with a history I can share.

This book was given to me by my dad, the king of business books and the fastest, most prolific reader I know. This guy blows through almost 1,000 pages a month on top of all the magazines, newspapers, and online sources he devours. Though our reading tastes aren’t completely aligned, when he recommends a book, I typically read it (or at least add it to The List in earnest).

This is the kind of book I don’t read. Though I find the advertising industry slightly interesting, I mostly hate it and wish it would go away (despite having a hand in it). This book, however, really cuts through the crap and explains positioning and branding in a way I’ve never heard before. In terms of marketing and branding, I pretty much live by the concepts in this book. Oh, and it’s about 30 years old. That’s how good this book is.

The  book shows you what successful companies have done to become that way and what other successful companies have done to screw it all up. With tons of examples and a very straight-forward writing style, this book will explain why certain products win and why others fail.

I read this book quickly and moved onto others by the same authors. They really know their stuff.

The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

This is the best book I’ve ever read and likely will ever read. Period.

I have suffered off and on from depression throughout my life and this book, the first and only book I’ve ever read on the subject, did so much for my understanding about the condition. I’ve really never read a book that explained what I think and feel better than this.

First off, Andrew Solomon is an excellent writer. He gets a bit verbose at times but I found each sentence, regardless of it’s complexity, an adventure in and of itself. He paints such an incredible picture of the feelings and thoughts that accompany depression. Like anyone able to describe depression, Andrew has been through it and reading what he’s suffered from made me realize how lucky I have been with my own depression. Andrew has seen hell, been through hell, and came out enlightened.

Strangely, I always find this book difficult to describe adequately. His words were just so well chosen and the research so personal and interesting, I feel like it’s a book that needs to be experienced to be understood fully.

If you suffer from depression, clinical or occasional or undiagnosed or anything, I completely recommend reading this book from cover to cover. If you know someone who suffers from this condition and are struggling to understand what they’re going through, this book will go a long way towards helping you see what they see. I’ve really never had a book that explained something as well as this.

The Non-Designers Design & Type Books by Robin Williams

I wanted to write a quick blurb about this little book that has gone a long way towards teaching me proper design.

I’ve been dabbling seriously in graphic design for about a year now and find it one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever done and also one of the most satisfying. It’s very subjective, hard to describe, very time consuming, very sensitive, and totally maddening. When it works, it really works but when it doesn’t work, it shows you the highest level of frustration possible.

Robin explains all the basics very well which puts you in a position to begin to experiment. If you just stick yourself in front of Photoshop and try to bang out a business card or a menu or a technical document (which you really wouldn’t do in Photoshop), it’s probably not going to work out well unless you’ve had some experience. If, however, you read this little guide and try it, you’re going to have a few more ideas and at least understand the contrainst you’re working with in terms of color, alignment, etc.

This book is great for people without any experience in design who want to improve the way their documents, webpages, application screens, and printed material looks. You’re not going to win any contests with this knowledge (and neither are her examples) but what you produce will immediately look better. The writing style is a bit goofy but I use what I learned every day in everything I produce from graffiti to webpages to technical documents to resumes.

CSS: The Definitive Guide by Eric Meyer

A solid plot, well-formed characters, and an intriguing writing style make this… wait, what?

This is a boring, very useful book. I’ve read a lot about CSS on the web and nothing came close to the  explanation in this book. Instead of saying things like “we won’t bother you with the complex way this is calculated,” Meyer bothers you with the complexity. Each property I read made me really understand how it works and how it should be used.

I’ve been reading this bad-boy from cover to cover and I think I’m doing myself a bit of a disservice. I think I’m going to skip to the positioning section (everyone could use a better understanding of this mysterious and magical world), read that, maybe read a few other things I’m interested in mastering and then leave it as a reference. It makes a lot more sense to read the properties you don’t understand than trying to get through it all.

Learn (x)HTML and CSS online, then buy this book is you’re serious about getting into web page design.

Visual Quickstart Guide to HTML, XHTML, & CSS by Elizabeth Castro

I think I bought this book a bit late in my web design learning process but I still find a lot of use out of it. I use it as my general reference book and I’m constantly in the appendix and the chapter about forms.

Though I would recommend this book to people because I found it useful, I think there might be better books on the subject. I say this because it does not go into the level of detail you really need to master HTML. It does a great job explaining what it does but there are quite a few things left out or breezed over to keep the book and appropriate size. Also, combining HTML and CSS in the same book is probably a bad idea. The CSS book I reviewed above is bigger than this book and, ostensibly, covers 1/3 of the material.

If you want to learn enough about HTML to get by creating simple web pages or fixing your own, this is a great book for you. If, however, you want to really understand HTML and get into web development, I would suggest finding a book with a bit more content (probably something from O’Reilly [publishers of the CSS book above]).

This is a guide I wrote a few months back. I have it posted on my homepage and at Squidoo but my homepage is going away in favor of a much simpler system so I wanted to move this. It’s also a bit more visible here, where I’m getting hits, rather than on the homepage, where I’m getting no hits!

If you’re considering whether or not you want to start a blog, ponder this:

By posting a great piece of advice or a guide for someone or your professional insight, you contribute to the incredible equalizing power of the internet. By making once-obscure and restricted information public, you engender a sense of community, a virtual, digital community that pulls people together across geographic and cultural barriers.

Want to be a part of something great? Put yourself out there! But how?

There are many different guides out there offering the best way to write or the easiest way to start or the quickest way to 10K subscribers. You might find some excellent information out there (I have, no doubt) but none of them really tell you how to find and connect with your readers in the most organic, benevolent way possible.

In this post, I offer 6 steps to write a great blog entry for any type of blog you could imagine. These will help you appear more often when real people search, garner more attention from those that matter, and, generally, be more successful as an RSS author. I’m writing these not from the position of a famous blogger (I’m not one of those) but from a chair in front of a monitor that has seen countless posts pass by.

I’m your audience. You better listen up!

1. Understand the format and write to it

While it’s really your blog’s content that determines whether or not I will return, the reach of your blog (meaning the amount of people that see it) makes a big difference in whether I find you in the first place or not. Want me to find you in the seemingly endless ocean of information out there? Then understand and practice the format that makes you findable. Keep these concepts in the forefront of your mind as you write so they start to become second nature. Thinking in terms of a blog post will cut down on the editing time and make it easier in the future to efficiently put out quality material for me to read. The following are a few things to keep in mind.

Your Title Speaks Volumes

The title of your blog post is a very crucial piece of the blog puzzle. With so many aggregators, search engines, and browsers, it’s the only thing that I’ll see and the big decider as to whether I’m going to click it or not. Keep it short, state your purpose, and tell me why I should go there. Great titles reel me in, just don’t disappoint me with a lame post!

It’s All About the First Impression

A great blog post starts with a great introduction. You want me to finish the article and spend as much time on the page as possible, right. Hook me with a great anecdote or a reason why this post will benefit me right now. Help me along to each section and you’ll make a real audience member out of me.

You’re Nothing without your Head

You’ll notice in this article that there is a title at the top, 6 sub-headings, and sub-sub-headings beneath those; this was not an accident. All three of these headers are critical to being seen by the search engines out there (what you want to happen if you want me to find you). Before you write, plan out your main title, your introduction, and all of your sub-headers. This will help you keep on task and make your article as useful as possible. At the end, make sure all of your headers match the information underneath and incorporate the key words you want to be associated with.

2. Consistency: Keep Me Coming Back for More

Think of your blog as your own personal publication, like a magazine or a newspaper. When I subscribe to Time or Newsweek or The Economist I’m not giving them money to send me an issue when they feel like it or when they get around to it. I receive one issue every month/week of a certain size and on a certain set of subjects.

Just like the New York Times can’t skip a few days here or there, your blog must be consistent in how often the posts are being made. This doesn’t mean you need to post twice a day but if you want to post twice a day, make sure you can keep that pace up ad infinitum. I’m more likely to return if you find a schedule that works for you and keep to it; it’s nice knowing that I have something to read on specific days, regardless of what those days are.

Before you start, come to an agreement with yourself and your co-authors (if there are any) on a frequency and stick to it. If you can write six days a week then go for it. If, however, you think you will only have the time or where-with-all or content for twice a week, then pick two days of the week and make sure those days get a post. You will be more successful by posting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday than you will by writing 7 times one week and once the next.

3. Make Your Content Unique

The internet is a very descriptive name that gives you a good idea of what is going on behind the scenes. It’s a giant network of interconnected information and benefits greatly from layered information on many different topics. For every topic there exists countless different descriptions, opinions, definitions, and alternatives. How can anything be unique when everything already has a website?

It’s certainly daunting to face a blank page and wonder if your thoughts are already out there so don’t. Unless you wrote them, your thoughts haven’t been published so write away.

Unique content comes from the heart and it comes from experience. Maybe one or two (or ten) people already wrote an article about marriage or family relations or earning trust. Maybe there is a whole network of people who write about it all the time but that doesn’t make me more likely to read theirs and less likely to read yours. You might only write a page or two about your topic but it came from YOUR mind and YOUR experience and, as such, is far more important to your audience.

Where people fall into a trap is when they look to other bodies of work to create their own. Referencing other blogs, articles, and web pages is fine but don’t make other people’s work your own (even if you give credit). With so many ways of receiving and filtering information, I certainly don’t need another middle man feeding me other people’s information. Bloggers who fall into the habit of parroting others fall quickly into irrelevancy.

If you write about a book, news article, or blog post that you read, tell me what you think about it. If you agree, tell me why and vice versa. Quote a small piece of the work and tell me what was right or wrong about that passage. Also: always give credit where credit is due.

4. What’s the Point? Ask Often

Most of us like to keep up with family and friends and colleagues to make sure everything is going well. If my mom wrote a blog about her day-to-day activities, I would probably check it out every now and then in between phone calls. But would my friends? Would my co-workers? Would anyone else?

Ask yourself over and over: why am I writing this? If you can’t come up with one or two reasons why, maybe you should re-think the topic. Every post doesn’t have to be a home run and change my life but each post should speak to me and what I want. You are writing for me, not for yourself.

In that vein, it’s important to understand what is important to you and what is important to me. Your experience and your knowledge is why you have the subscribers you do but unless that knowledge is consistently helping me in my life, chances are that I won’t be around for the long haul.

Problogger.com speaks to this point::

Stop writing about yourself. Start solving problems - Surfers become readers when a blog provides something that is wanted. A casual visitor may read your blog because they find training, answers to problems, entertainment, or something else they want. This more than likely will mean that they won’t want to read about you, your girlfriend, your cats, your kids, or your catastrophes (unless you have a personal blog that your friends read). Discontinuing the off-topic posts will help you to develop more repeat traffic and takes exactly 0 minutes to implement.

5. Simple and To-The-Point Language

Ok, here’s the tricky part, picking a font that works. Here are the basic rules:

This particular point is important for those with an extensive vocabulary or those who write about a particular topic with which they are very knowledgeable. It is important to keep jargon and unnecessarily arcane or obscure words from damaging the accessibility of your blog. If you want to appeal to me and all the other me’s out there, it is important that you don’t make me feel uneducated or uninformed. I’m not an idiot but when I fire up Google Reader on my phone and catch a few blog posts on the trolley, I don’t want to have to hunt for a dictionary (that’s what Infinite Jest is for).

Additionally, by using commonplace words (even if you sound a bit repetitive) you are increasing the likelihood that I’ll will find your post through a search engine. Once you’ve had just a bit of experience using a search engine, you realize that being specific is key to finding what you want efficiently.

When you are writing, don’t change what you want to say to fit into a set of words but keep your post direct and avoid unnecessary words. Use short, direct sentences and clear and concise language (this should start to resemble a Strunk & White flashback from your school days). Avoid long tangents that can lose me and make the difference between a returning customer and a bounce.

With a blog post, shorter is better. I have many different blogs I subscribe to and tying up my time with a long-winded post is inconsiderate to say the least. If a particular topic requires more analysis or additional information on your part, consider a multi-part post; you can be sure I’ll come back if I liked the first one. Make sure to plan the series out and tell me what I’m in for.

6. Back It Up

At their best, blogs are charged with providing clear, concise, and CORRECT information. Getting your news from CNN.com is a viable option but I would rather read it from people who were there and saw it happen. Similarly, I would rather read about counseling from a 30 year veteran than just a simple definition on Wikipedia.

The problem with blogs, however, is that each blog has its own reputation to build and maintain. The blog community (called the blogosphere) has done a great job of raising the overall opinion of blogs as information disseminators over the last few years. Your blog will benefit from this but you also have your own work to do.

Make sure that your facts can be backed up and include links wherever possible. Your information is doubly powerful if it is corroborated by a quote from someone or even another blog post. Link out to other site when you can and include short quotes when appropriate.

There is one thing that you won’t be able to source: your own experience. Anecdotes are important in building trust and respect but they must be accurate. A simple exaggeration of a particular experience might seem minor when you write it but if you are ever called out it could be disastrous. Building my trust is paramount to being the most interesting blog writer ever. If the story needs modification to fit the post, you don’t need the story (or the post).

Bonus: Ask yourself these questions as you write

• What am I trying to say? What should the reader be getting out of this?
• Why should the reader care about what I’m writing?
• Am I validating what I’m saying? Are my facts straight?
• Am I including too much personal information?
• Could this be split into several different parts? Am I going on too long?
• Is my title strong enough? Does it accurately explain what I’ve written?
• Do my sub-headings make sense? Do they correctly label what follows?
• Am I considering Seth’s 3 U’s: unique, useful, up-to-date?

I posted a while back with my armchair analysis (no experience) of a few of the many self-publishing outfits available. I liked Lulu the best from my initial look and, as such, went with them to publish my client’s book. Here are my impressions about the whole writing, publishing, and uploading experience.

Why Lulu?

My review post tells a bit more about why I picked this route but, to sum it all up:

• Low cost to get an ISBN and listed on books-in-print
• Great support material
• Seemed simple and straight forward

There is something to be said about a company that just puts it all out there. Between all of their FAQs and their user community, it seemed hard to go wrong with them. The most important, however, was the price. My client didn’t have any intention of building a marketing campaign behind his book besides what he could conjure up himself. Consequently, extra services, add-ons, and packages were simply of no interest. Lulu is bare-bones: you get an ISBN and you get listed everywhere important. That’s all we wanted and, for $100, that’s what we got.

How does it work?

Lulu lists out all the steps in their help section and it really didn’t stray from that (so far).

1. Purchase Published by Lulu or Published by You service and receive an ISBN.
   “Published by Lulu” ISBN’s are assigned immediately.
   “Published by You” ISBN’s take up to 3 business days to be assigned. This is because extra information needs to be processed with the ISBN Agency.
2. Revise the book to contain the ISBN number in the copyright page and add a bar code to the back cover (for one-piece covers).
3. Purchase a proof copy of this newest version of the book.
4. After receiving and carefully reviewing the book, either:
   a. Approve the book on Lulu. Go to Step 6.
   b. Deny the book and make changes. Go to Step 5.
5. Make revisions and upload this new manuscript. Go back to Step 3.
6. The book is uploaded to the distribution center within:
   3-5 business days for “Published by Lulu” distribution
   2 to 3 weeks for “Published by You” distribution.
7. Printer reviews the book to ensure it is up to standards. This can take up to 2 weeks.
   Once accepted for printing, it can take another 6 to 8 weeks before the book is available through online retailers.
   If rejected for not meeting requirements, you will be notified via e-mail that the book must be revised. Go back to Step 2.
8. The book becomes available for listing with online booksellers.
9. Online booksellers like Amazon decide whether or not they would like to list the book. (In our experience, they almost always list it.
   Once a month, online booksellers update their databases with new books. When they update (if the booksellers choose to list your book), you will see the book listed as “currently available.” This can take 6-8 weeks.

How did it go?

Step 1: “Purchase Published by Lulu or Published by You service and receive an ISBN.”

Sure enough, walk through the straight-forward form they provide, buy the publishing option (we chose “published by Lulu”), and you’re published. Wait, what?

Here was one of the few minor problems I had with this process. You’re asked for a title and an author right off the bat. Make DAMN sure that this is the title and author you want to use. The ISBN is tied to the title of the book so if you put in a title now and want to change it later, you have to buy a new ISBN. This wasn’t terribly clear and, in the end, we wanted to change the title a bit but couldn’t for fear of messing up the ISBN tie. So, word to the wise, your book content, cover, and description can change over and over but the author and title cannot.

Speaking of which, this information was in the FAQ (it was not terribly clear that the title would be finalized as soon as your get an ISBN). READ THE FAQ. Which FAQ? EVERY FAQ, READ EVERY ONE THAT PERTAINS TO YOU. I probably would have made a million more mistakes if I didn’t read that thing over and over. Pretty much every question you could have is contained in there. Don’t skip over this just because you think you know what you’re doing.

After entering in your author and title, it asks you to pick the size, binding, and color. We chose 6″ x 9″ (an odd size but it worked out in the end), perfect binding, and black and white. It doesn’t seem like it on the site but perfect binding is your typical paperback binding.

Next you need to upload the file. That came fast. This is my second minor gripe with this service. Lulu calls books “projects” which, to me, says “work in progress.” Instead, “project” means the finished product (kinda). Keep in mind, you can make revisions to the cover and text as much as you want before everything is finalized. Still, for the project to be created, you have to have SOMETHING to upload - same goes for the cover. If your book/cover isn’t complete, upload anything and come back and revise the content.

At this point, I was a bit freaked out because everything was not finalized and I was scared that I might not be able to edit. So I read the FAQs and it said that I would be able to make revisions. I’ll talk about the formatting and layout later.

Upload your book file (text, no cover) and Lulu coverts it to a print-ready file. You can take a look at the file or just move on (I never looked at their version of the file, assuming it was the same as the PDF I uploaded [it was]). Next, they ask for your cover to be uploaded, then the pricing and description. At the end you get a submit button which, honestly, was a bit difficult to press. Keep in mind, this submit button locks in your author and title but not your content and cover. Press the button and you get a the fairly exhilarating message, “You’re published!”

The work has only just begun.

Step 2: “Revise the book to contain the ISBN number in the copyright page and add a bar code to the back cover (for one-piece covers).”

We chose the one-piece cover (you design it from scratch as one big piece) so that’s what I’ll talk about.

I did all the design and layout in Photoshop CS3. It worked great for me and that’s what I would use again for the same task. You also need access to Adobe Acrobat to make the PDF file. There are free PDF making programs but Acrobat has all the document control you need (quality, size, etc). If you have neither one of these tools but want a quality cover, contact me at josh@joshcanhelp.com and I’ll help you with design and PDF-creation (or just PDF-creation if you have an appropriate file).

What you need, in the end, is a very high-quality PDF file that conforms to their size requirements. I looked to their Book Covers FAQ for information and found what I needed. Here’s the deal:

• Find your size on the chart from the link above (ours, for reference, was 6×9)
• Use their spine width calculator to find how big your spine is based on the number of pages (you’ll need to know how many pages your final version will be - if you’re one or two off, it won’t make a big difference but if you can, be exact)
• Make your new document in Photoshop or whatever program you are using. Set your resolution to 300 or higher (I used 600 and it looked perfectly clean) and enter in the dimensions (height is listed on the site, width includes the spine. For our 6×9 with 120 pages it was 9.25″ [9" + bleed, as listed] by 12.52″ [6" x 2 + 0.27" spine + bleed]).
• First thing, set guides to indicate the spine (for our 6×9, the vertical guides were set at 6.125″ [back cover + 1/2 bleed] and 6.395″ [spine]).
• Go crazy! Remember that there will be about 0.125″ cut off from every edge. If you have a picture/pattern that goes to the edges, you’re going to lose a bit.
• Now, you’ll need to add a space for the barcode and, if you want, the product number from Lulu (just makes it easy for people to find). Here is the information on how/where to place the barcode and here is where you go to generate the barcode (product code is the ISBN, I did add the auxiliary barcode [value = 90000],  I left the color settings the same, I did include the “>,” I left the font as-is and downloaded it from here, and I left the rest the same]. The barcode comes in EPS format (standard vector graphic, readable by Photoshop and Illustrator) and must be placed in the space you left. All of this seems really scary at first but it all comes together if you follow the directions.
• Saving the file was bit difficult. Make sure that the final size is correct and the resolution is what you set in the beginning. I set everything to the highest quality settings (highest quality for JPEG, reduce images to 600 DPI) and in the simplest format possible (do not retain Photoshop editing capabilities, PDF 1.5 format). The final file was 5.3MB, for reference.

The cover was a bit unnerving because I don’t have tons of print experience and this wasn’t my book! Using the information above along with the FAQs, I ended up with exactly what I wanted printed in very high quality.

Step 3: “Purchase a proof copy of this newest version of the book.”

$10.36 for ours, not too bad. I was VERY pleased with the quality:

The cover print quality was immaculate and the inside looked great. The paper is off-white (so is the cover but it has a background color) and super-smooth. The pages are not very thick but nothing about it feels cheap; it’s the real-deal. Black print was perfect but gray, because the printing is true black & white (not monochrome but “black ink or no ink”), is not smooth (see the fourth pic above). The binding is high-quality and exactly what I wanted. I was completely satisfied with the print quality… to be honest, I was taken aback by it. When I gave it to my client, he was speechless for a minute or so (this is his first real, published book).

What I wasn’t pleased about (which is entirely my fault) was the page numbers. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re making your content:

• Use their templates. That will eliminate a lot of problems.
• Be careful with your page numbers. If you have a title page and an introduction and other pages before the content, you’re not going to want page numbers on them. I made a total of 6 different Word files: one for the title page, copyright info, and dedication, one for the foreword and intro, one for a second title page I wanted, one for the first half of the book, one for the second, and one for the last couple pages. I compiled them all together in Adobe Acrobat. Page numbers in Word can be difficult to work with so make sure everything looks good when you’re done.
• Remember that you’re laying out the book from the VERY FIRST PAGE after the cover to the VERY LAST PAGE before the back cover. Leave two blank pages in the beginning (one page front and back) and one blank page on the end if you want it to be widely available (distribution services require a certain layout).
• When you read through your final PDF manuscript, pay very close attention to which side the page number shows up on (if you choose the Word option to have them switch sides). The first page in the PDF will be the absolute first page in the book. Look at that page and say out loud “right.” The next page falls on the left so look at that one and say out loud “left.” Do this through the WHOLE MANUSCRIPT, paying attention to how the pages line up and which pages are grouped together. If it isn’t right, insert/delete a page. Make sure your title page is the third page (”right”) and the copyright page is the fourth (”left”).
• I used another published book to lay out my pages and to make sure my copyright page had the right information. This was very helpful.

Step 4: “After receiving and carefully reviewing the book, either: approve the book on Lulu or deny the book and make changes”

We made a total of 3 revisions (putting us on the 4th revision edition) before approving the book. Make sure everything is golden and that you followed all of the distribution rules before you approve the book. Approving the book just consists of pressing a button and reading another satisfying message:

Anything else to know?

I just approved the book before writing this article so there might be more to say about the publishing process. All-in-all, I’m very pleased with how this came out and I look forward to doing business with them in the future.

If you’re thinking about publishing on your own, as long as you’re somewhat computer/graphics savvy, I would recommend Lulu. If you’re not, you can always hire me to help out!

Stay tuned for my review of Blurb.com (spoiler: interesting but not as good) coming soon.