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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2020 7:28:25 GMT
The cover design has a black bar on the bottom
So true Richard, I wrote to Lulu support about this ages ago and haven't had a word about it from them. PS I made absolutely sure the cover was the right size but it srill gave me a wide black stripe at the bottom.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2020 9:56:46 GMT
The cover design has a black bar on the bottomSo true Richard, I wrote to Lulu support about this ages ago and haven't had a word about it from them. PS I made absolutely sure the cover was the right size but it srill gave me a wide black stripe at the bottom. What size is your cover in inches? What is your book size? How many pages does your book have? What is the binding? Is it cream or white paper? If you have a black bar at the bottom you are missing some small detail.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2020 10:02:56 GMT
I only use PayPal for payments. That's why I chose Lulu at first over Create space. For personal reasons don't want the money going into my bank account. Paypal has never charged me anything. I've used them for over twelve years. Streetlib might though. I've already sent them an email so looking into it. And I have read the book, many years ago. Paypal is robbing you blind (each time they keep the profits of about 5 books at least). Payoneer gives you a credit card, loads it and you have the choice whether to add a bank account and withdraw the money to it.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 6, 2020 12:08:50 GMT
> If you actually believed Lulu Press would resolve all the new platform's issues by close of business today, oh well.
Oh, my gosh, Sphinx. Of course not! I guess you missed that the whole point of this thread was to illustrate the futility of believing Lulu's predictions. It's called theatrical satire. They said they'd be down "a few hours". This was DAY 42.
I get theatrical satire and though not as artistic plain old sarcasm works as well.
Kind of hard to miss what was supposed to be a weekend cruise now sailing into week 7, while whoever is at the wheel is trying to steer two courses at once.
Then again I'm not so artistic.
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Post by richard on Jun 6, 2020 13:54:20 GMT
The cover design has a black bar on the bottomSo true Richard, I wrote to Lulu support about this ages ago and haven't had a word about it from them. PS I made absolutely sure the cover was the right size but it srill gave me a wide black stripe at the bottom. What size is your cover in inches? What is your book size? How many pages does your book have? What is the binding? Is it cream or white paper? If you have a black bar at the bottom you are missing some small detail. The black bar is an error on Lulu's part, nothing whatsoever to do with the creator or dimensions or paper colour or whatever. It's where they want the author name to go on the front cover. If you're used to uploading your own front cover with author name and title already part of the image, the black bar screws the while thing up.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2020 14:58:49 GMT
What size is your cover in inches? What is your book size? How many pages does your book have? What is the binding? Is it cream or white paper? If you have a black bar at the bottom you are missing some small detail. The black bar is an error on Lulu's part, nothing whatsoever to do with the creator or dimensions or paper colour or whatever. It's where they want the author name to go on the front cover. If you're used to uploading your own front cover with author name and title already part of the image, the black bar screws the while thing up. How do you know that? Have you done a lot of covers with their new templates? Winter has recently done one successfully, which means the templates work fine. Larika is new at this. Why not try to help her instead of assuming Lulu put random black bars on her cover. Makes no sense, especially since they issue a refund when this happens. Let's be fair. Lulu is flawed but they have been doing this for 16 years.
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Post by JesusNinja on Jun 6, 2020 17:15:17 GMT
Yes Maggie is correct. I did a one piece cover and uploaded the PDF. Everything looked great in previewer. I ordered two proofs and they came out exactly the way they previewed. The only problem was the first proof lulu used my old files which I had updated prior to the update. That's the reason I had to order two. The first one though is ruined with printing on some page with texted printed two of three times over each other. The second print came out great. So the creator is fine. But still waiting for a response on my ruined proof. That wasn't lulu's fault though.
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Post by richard on Jun 6, 2020 19:33:33 GMT
Yes Maggie is correct. I did a one piece cover and uploaded the PDF. Everything looked great in previewer. I ordered two proofs and they came out exactly the way they previewed. The only problem was the first proof lulu used my old files which I had updated prior to the update. That's the reason I had to order two. The first one though is ruined with printing on some page with texted printed two of three times over each other. The second print came out great. So the creator is fine. But still waiting for a response on my ruined proof. That wasn't lulu's fault though. The black bar issue does not apply to one piece cover pdfs. This has nothing to do with that. It appears when you use the particular basic cover design tool template that lets you upload your own jpg full front cover. I ran into the same problem as larika; when I saw her post I realised it was the same thing I had noticed. I was trying to help larika by explaining that it's meant to be there, for the creator to add the author name to. At first glance, it is not obvious why there is a black bar at the bottom of the cover. The problem it creates is that you can't upload your own full front cover anymore without the black bar at the bottom, at least at the moment. I understand it's a beta version on their website now, but for me (and apparently for larika) this has caused an issue. It was never an issue with the old cover designer. It's certainly meant I have had to do my covers differently now; I've been using the same basic layout for the past 12 years. I have created a few covers with the new creation tool by way of experiment, and (in my case) had more pleasing results with one of the other templates, which is the two-colour cover, where you can place a more or less square sized image of your own below where the title and author name appears. With that particular template, and having a barcode on the back cover, there is less space for back cover text, but not the end of the world - though I had to chop down my back cover blurb to fit it in. So going forward, I have found that playing around with the different templates and finding what works for you is the way to adapt to this. There are 4 different templates to experiment with for those of us not savvy enough to create a one piece pdf cover. I hope everyone finds what works for them and can have success going forward.
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Post by JesusNinja on Jun 6, 2020 21:45:22 GMT
Thank you Richard for clarifying that. I know on the old templates they just removed, I'd have to go through various ones until I found one that would "fit" my cover. Some have slots titles, photos,etc. You'd have to delete those or change templates to get the right effect.I would also suggest learning to make your own one piece cover. It really is not that hard if you can design your front and rear cover then you pretty much got it done. It's just a matter of downloading the template and then using those borders to make sure everything is inside those lines. It is a learning curve and you need the software. I use Photoshop but I think Gimp is free and some others are. Many on here would glad to help to with if you chose to go that route. I just made my first one and it came out fine. You'll also end up with much nicer covers than using the old templates. But I understand why the bar is there now. So yeah you'd need to change templates to find one that won't show anything but you're cover.
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Post by richard on Jun 7, 2020 0:12:13 GMT
Thank you Richard for clarifying that. I know on the old templates they just removed, I'd have to go through various ones until I found one that would "fit" my cover. Some have slots titles, photos,etc. You'd have to delete those or change templates to get the right effect.I would also suggest learning to make your own one piece cover. It really is not that hard if you can design your front and rear cover then you pretty much got it done. It's just a matter of downloading the template and then using those borders to make sure everything is inside those lines. It is a learning curve and you need the software. I use Photoshop but I think Gimp is free and some others are. Many on here would glad to help to with if you chose to go that route. I just made my first one and it came out fine. You'll also end up with much nicer covers than using the old templates. But I understand why the bar is there now. So yeah you'd need to change templates to find one that won't show anything but you're cover. Hi Winter, thanks for that, will keep it in mind. Glad you had success. I was actually using the old-old cover designer (not the one piece pdf one) which was still an option on the old website as a link at the top of the old basic cover designer. That had worked for me for so long, but the good news is the most recent project I needed to revise is now in hand. It involved resizing the book (Cute pdf writer is the only one that embeds my fonts when using Word 1997, impossible to create a 6x9 pdf using that), and adapting to the new basic cover creator, but a proof copy I ordered last month looked good (before I was locked out of my projects for two weeks). There are four basic cover design templates now: 1. Front cover (which has the black bar problem) 2. Centered text cover (looks ok, but text only, no images) 3. Two-colour cover (which I have gone for, image on the cover, but sadly no option to have one on the back cover - I used to put an author photo there) 4. Centered image cover (which straddles the spine of the book, otherwise, just text on the rest of the cover)
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 7, 2020 15:29:58 GMT
While Cute PDF works on a Windows machine, the workaround for Linux [when set up to use Word 97] is in Word embed fonts. Then using Libre Office Writer open the document and output as PDF. Libre Office Writer [eight years ago] used to hose some Word formatting but those issues have been fixed .
If your Word doc is in 6x9 format Writer will output a 6x9 PDF, and it also has a setting to embed fonts.
Just saying in case you get tired of Winders or want to try a dual-boot.
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Post by richard on Jun 7, 2020 16:27:42 GMT
While Cute PDF works on a Windows machine, the workaround for Linux [when set up to use Word 97] is in Word embed fonts. The using Libre Office Writer open the document and output as PDF. Libre Office Writer [eight years ago] used to hose some Word formatting but those issues have been fixed .
If your Word doc is in 6x9 format Writer will output a 6x9 PDF, and it also has a setting to embed fonts. Just saying in case you get tired of Winders or want to try a dual-boot. Hi Sphinx, thanks for the tip, appreciated.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 7, 2020 16:40:53 GMT
While Cute PDF works on a Windows machine, the workaround for Linux [when set up to use Word 97] is in Word embed fonts. Then using Libre Office Writer open the document and output as PDF. Libre Office Writer [eight years ago] used to hose some Word formatting but those issues have been fixed .
If your Word doc is in 6x9 format Writer will output a 6x9 PDF, and it also has a setting to embed fonts. Just saying in case you get tired of Winders or want to try a dual-boot. Hi Sphinx, thanks for the tip, appreciated. Not a problem. I used to use Windows XP Pro, and with I new computer Windows 7 & 8 proved to be such dogs for my purposes, I went full-time to Ubuntu.
Libre Office also has a download for Windows.
Online converters aren't always great, so it's good to know feasible workarounds.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2020 18:35:22 GMT
1. Front cover (which has the black bar problem) 2. Centered text cover (looks ok, but text only, no images) 3. Two-colour cover (which I have gone for, image on the cover, but sadly no option to have one on the back cover - I used to put an author photo there) 4. Centered image cover (which straddles the spine of the book, otherwise, just text on the rest of the cover)
Yes Richard, that's what I meant by wide black bar at the bottom. I was trying the front cover template number 1. I didn't like the others. However I did try a one piece cover and downloaded the template and made a one piece according to the template. Exactly the right size. I then printed to 995 which makes PDF files. However Lulu wouldn't accept it. I have always made PDF files this way in the past. However in the old Lulu and the old cover in the wizard Lulu accepted jpg files. They are so much easier to work with as was the old Lulu.
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