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Post by Darren Turner on Jun 17, 2020 17:09:37 GMT
Hi everyone, can I ask for some help please? I've been a long-term user of Lulu, but following the recent changes to the site I cannot get the interior pages of a book to upload. I've always purchased the small paperback book (pocket book, is it?) and my Word documents have all been 10.8cm x 17.46cm. The last one I ordered was in April this year and I've checked the Word doc and the PDF and they are both exactly this size. I've tried this week to upload a new book of these exact dimensions and it simply won't upload. Lulu's online guide isn't terribly helpful to me, as it's description of the process to convert a Word document to a PDF does not relate to the settings in my version of Word (2010). I have though gleaned that I may now need to be adding some width and height for bleed dimensions (I understand the principle, but have never had to before). So, adding some 'bleed' to my Word document changes all my formatting, reducing the document from 408 pages to 371 pages. I've then exported this to PDF (and made sure fonts are embedded) and tried to upload this as a test but it still gets the same error message. Does anyone have any ideas what the problem might be? If this is correct, and that I need to add the bleed where I haven't before, then I will need to reformat the book and also cover which was carefully created for the spine width of a 408 page document. Any help and suggestions gratefully received.
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Post by Darren Turner on Jun 17, 2020 17:12:24 GMT
Just to add: the dimensions of the 'revised' pdf, with the bleed added, are 114mm x 181mm.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 17, 2020 17:25:48 GMT
While I use Word 97 the concept should be similar.
By adding a custom page size to allow for bleed what you want to do is make sure you have the extra white space for trimming, meaning you need to adjust the margins on either side of the text to reflect your old interior file. MS Word likes to automatically adjust stuff even when you don't want it to do so.
Simply stated you want your text to occupy the same amount of space it originally did, you're just adding a little size outside that area. You're going to have to open the file with your new custom page size, manually adjust inner, outer, top, and bottom margins to make sure it's exactly like your old file, which should also bump the page count back to 408 pages.
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Post by Darren Turner on Jun 17, 2020 17:52:39 GMT
Thanks Sphinx-Cameron. That part makes sense, I’ll give that a try. Two supplementary questions though, if I may? 1). I did try uploading a pdf with the plus-bleed dimensions as a test, but with the same error message. Is there something else I may be missing? And 2) am I right in thinking that it’s Lulu’s recent ‘regeneration’ that’s behind my problem, given that I must have printed over a dozen books before now with these exact dimensions with no bleed added / required? Many thanks.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 17, 2020 18:16:36 GMT
It sounds like just adjusting the page size to fit the new bleed requirement it shifted your margins [inner, outer, upper, and lower] to accommodate the extra space, which placed your text back too close to the now required extra bleed.
You can attribute part of the issue to the "upgrade" since new parameters for old sizes were instituted without a lot of prior warning, if any. Under the old specs I could upload a PDF formatted for exactly 6 inches x 9 inches, whereas now it would have to be 6.25 inches x 9.25 inches though the text area inside would have to fit the within the old 6x9 measurements. What it means is the printer has extra trim variance or slop to play with in order for a print job to still be within specifications.
Originally 10.8cm x 17.46cm, now 114mm x 181mm which translates to 11.4cm x 18.1cm, for extra bleed of 0.6cm x 0.64cm or 60mm x 64mm.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2020 18:35:39 GMT
Thanks Sphinx-Cameron. That part makes sense, I’ll give that a try. Two supplementary questions though, if I may? 1). I did try uploading a pdf with the plus-bleed dimensions as a test, but with the same error message. Is there something else I may be missing? And 2) am I right in thinking that it’s Lulu’s recent ‘regeneration’ that’s behind my problem, given that I must have printed over a dozen books before now with these exact dimensions with no bleed added / required? Many thanks. Sorry to jump in here, but I had an idea as I was reading. Print your word doc as PDF 6X9, then take that PDF and print as 6.25x9.25. Shrink to fit if necessary. That should do it.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2020 18:37:05 GMT
Hi everyone, can I ask for some help please? I've been a long-term user of Lulu, but following the recent changes to the site I cannot get the interior pages of a book to upload. I've always purchased the small paperback book (pocket book, is it?) and my Word documents have all been 10.8cm x 17.46cm. The last one I ordered was in April this year and I've checked the Word doc and the PDF and they are both exactly this size. I've tried this week to upload a new book of these exact dimensions and it simply won't upload. Lulu's online guide isn't terribly helpful to me, as it's description of the process to convert a Word document to a PDF does not relate to the settings in my version of Word (2010). I have though gleaned that I may now need to be adding some width and height for bleed dimensions (I understand the principle, but have never had to before). So, adding some 'bleed' to my Word document changes all my formatting, reducing the document from 408 pages to 371 pages. I've then exported this to PDF (and made sure fonts are embedded) and tried to upload this as a test but it still gets the same error message. Does anyone have any ideas what the problem might be? If this is correct, and that I need to add the bleed where I haven't before, then I will need to reformat the book and also cover which was carefully created for the spine width of a 408 page document. Any help and suggestions gratefully received. Print normally, no bleed. Take fixed formatting PDF and reprint that adding the bleed. Nothing will move.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 17, 2020 18:43:53 GMT
To be honest I hadn't thought of that solution.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2020 21:55:59 GMT
To be honest I hadn't thought of that solution. It also works if you want to take a 6x9 book and make it 5.5x8.5, without having to reformat. However, if you have used Adobe Pro to print you cannot edit text on copyright page in order to replace the ISBN with a new one. If you have used DoPDF to print the PDF you can edit text in Adobe Pro. That is why it is important to always save a standard PDF as well as the PDFx setting required by Ingram Spark and some other PODs.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 17, 2020 23:37:52 GMT
To be honest I hadn't thought of that solution. It also works if you want to take a 6x9 book and make it 5.5x8.5, without having to reformat. However, if you have used Adobe Pro to print you cannot edit text on copyright page in order to replace the ISBN with a new one. If you have used DoPDF to print the PDF you can edit text in Adobe Pro. That is why it is important to always save a standard PDF as well as the PDFx setting required by Ingram Spark and some other PODs. I'll have to edit the metadata I can in Word 97 via the properties, the do the PDf with Libre Office Writer. Adobe Pro doesn't work with Linux based systems.
I checked with Ingram Spark and they told me as long as I have the major stuff they don't care what program I use to make the PDF. I might have to get LaTex when I can afford it.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2020 0:11:48 GMT
It also works if you want to take a 6x9 book and make it 5.5x8.5, without having to reformat. However, if you have used Adobe Pro to print you cannot edit text on copyright page in order to replace the ISBN with a new one. If you have used DoPDF to print the PDF you can edit text in Adobe Pro. That is why it is important to always save a standard PDF as well as the PDFx setting required by Ingram Spark and some other PODs. I'll have to edit the metadata I can in Word 97 via the properties, the do the PDf with Libre Office Writer. Adobe Pro doesn't work with Linux based systems.
I checked with Ingram Spark and they told me as long as I have the major stuff they don't care what program I use to make the PDF. I might have to get LaTex when I can afford it.
It's not the program. It's the setting. Read their manual.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 18, 2020 18:07:29 GMT
I'll have to edit the metadata I can in Word 97 via the properties, the do the PDf with Libre Office Writer. Adobe Pro doesn't work with Linux based systems.
I checked with Ingram Spark and they told me as long as I have the major stuff they don't care what program I use to make the PDF. I might have to get LaTex when I can afford it.
It's not the program. It's the setting. Read their manual. I was reading their manual before I emailed them with questions since Adobe products are typically MS Windows / Mac OS-centric and typically don't work or at best don't work properly on Linux systems.
There are proprietary programs that work on Linux that allow editing PDF settings, which I'll check into again early next year.
PDF/X is basically used for graphics, as in interior graphics using CMYK instead of RGB. For a text file with at most one grayscale image PDF/X is basically irrelevant. Covers are JPG, using RBG from what I could tell.
By the time I'm ready to go for distribution through IS I'll be able to afford to pay for some assistance if my PDF text files or JPG cover files need some tweaks I'm unable to do.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2020 20:14:15 GMT
It's not the program. It's the setting. Read their manual. I was reading their manual before I emailed them with questions since Adobe products are typically MS Windows / Mac OS-centric and typically don't work or at best don't work properly on Linux systems.
There are proprietary programs that work on Linux that allow editing PDF settings, which I'll check into again early next year.
PDF/X is basically used for graphics, as in interior graphics using CMYK instead of RGB. For a text file with at most one grayscale image PDF/X is basically irrelevant. Covers are JPG, using RBG from what I could tell.
By the time I'm ready to go for distribution through IS I'll be able to afford to pay for some assistance if my PDF text files or JPG cover files need some tweaks I'm unable to do.
You're making it sound complicated. All of it. Anyone reading will think they can't do it.
It's simple: Just print your file as PDFX1a-2001 for all Ingram Spark uploads. That is all. Easy and anyone can do it.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2020 20:18:00 GMT
I was reading their manual before I emailed them with questions since Adobe products are typically MS Windows / Mac OS-centric and typically don't work or at best don't work properly on Linux systems.
There are proprietary programs that work on Linux that allow editing PDF settings, which I'll check into again early next year.
PDF/X is basically used for graphics, as in interior graphics using CMYK instead of RGB. For a text file with at most one grayscale image PDF/X is basically irrelevant. Covers are JPG, using RBG from what I could tell.
By the time I'm ready to go for distribution through IS I'll be able to afford to pay for some assistance if my PDF text files or JPG cover files need some tweaks I'm unable to do.
You're making it sound complicated. All of it. Anyone reading will think they can't do it.
It's simple: Just print your file as PDFX1a-2001 for all Ingram Spark uploads. That is all. Easy and anyone can do it.
Who cares about Linux? Who cares about graphics and who cares about grayscale? Just choose a simple setting from your PDF creator. Simple. The eight-year-old and the granny can do it. No need to know all that nonsense.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 18, 2020 20:29:13 GMT
Jun 18, 2020 15:18:00 GMT -5 Maggie said: Maggie Avatar Jun 18, 2020 15:14:15 GMT -5 Maggie said: You're making it sound complicated. All of it. Anyone reading will think they can't do it.
It's simple: Just print your file as PDFX1a-2001 for all Ingram Spark uploads. That is all. Easy and anyone can do it.
Who cares about Linux? Who cares about graphics and who cares about grayscale? Just choose a simple setting from your PDF creator. Simple. The eight-year-old and the granny can do it. No need to know all that nonsense.
Miss Maggie, It's not always as easy as you'd like it to sound. My PDF creator at this point is Libre Office Writer, and it has no setting for PDFX1a-2001. Online converters don't allow me to choose between PDF/A and PDF/X. Also I've noticed a lot of online converters hose metadata even when based off MS Office 365. Settings for PDFs can be OS specific and do cause issues if there is no direct one-for-one alternative. I'm a grandparent and a parent, I'm more than eight-years-old, and I need to know all that nonsense because I don't use MS Windows. I care about the programs for Linux because that's what I can afford to use. I'm not rich, meaning if I have to choose between paying for a license for MS Windows or feeding my kids, I choose my kids. Denigrating me does not advance your argument.
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