Ebook Mess?

[PastorBrady]

Greetings,
I thought that I was finished and ready to go until I downloaded by book for review.
Everything went well, I uploaded from Microsoft Word my:
acknowledgement page, content page and 72 "free verse" poems.
The system said that would be 277 pages, wonder why?
Then, to finish it off when it was downloaded for review
all that I could see was a bunch of symbols of some sort, why?

What do I need to do correct this; I'd like to get it done this week-end
and be selling it for Christmas Gifts.

Sincerely,
Pastor Brady C. Harness

[Belinda D'Alessandro]

Without being able to see your original source file (or knowing which font you used in your original source file) or the PDF that resulted from the conversion process, it could be that you used a font not on the list of fonts accepted by Lulu's converter.

The list of fonts Lulu's converter can accept and embed in a PDF is listed here: http://www.lulu.com/en/help/font_guidelines

If you used a font not on that list, the converter could have substituted it with Symbol font in order to produce a PDF (which in turn could have had an affected your formatting and increased your page count).

If you do wish to use a font not on the list of fonts accepted by Lulu's converter, you'd need to upload a PDF with the fonts embedded.

[PastorBrady]

Greetings,

I printed out: "What fonts can I use in my document?"

Then using Mircosoft WORD, I used:
TIMES NEW ROMAN for Title of each page and at the bottom for "Page #"
for the body of each page:
Palatino

So that can't be the problem, can it?

I also used: Epub New Version to upload into.

Sincerely,
Pastor Brady

[kevinlomas]

the way you at first describe it, did you upload some pages as different files?
However, the strange coding you describe could be exactly that. The hidden coding within the files that hides things like the defaults.

[PastorBrady]

Greetings,

What I did was type my poems into Microsoft Word,
then uploaded using that LuLu UPub thing.

Then when I down loaded all those strange symbols where there
and not what I had typed.

I had typed everything inorder with page numbers,
now in my files nothing is in order, why?

Sincerely,
Pastor Brady

[kevinlomas]

that usually means you are using fonts that lulu's convertors do not like. Plus using Return to create another page. As far as I can tell the new e-book formats are Adobe files and the Adobe convertors do not like the above kind of things.


http://www.lulu.com/en/help/ebook_file_types

This is what the convertors expect to find >>

http://www.lulu.com/uk/help/how_do_I_make_pdf#word_pdf

But lulu do have a poem book project wizard you know >>

http://www.lulu.com/uk/help/lulu_studio

create via that and then upload the wizard created PDF from that into an e-book project perhaps?

BTW, if you are using the latest version of Word it defaults to saving as docx, not doc, at the convertors cannot use the former.

[Belinda D'Alessandro]

Something weird has happened during the conversion process, I'm not sure what. The only way I could try to work out what happened is to look at your original source document.

If saving your original source document as a Word 97-2003 file doesn't help and you'd like me to take a look at your original source document, you can contact me through my storefront (by clicking on my name and then "send this user a message" from my storefront).

[mcwriting]

Dear Pastor Brady,

What you describe is a symptom of a PDF file losing it's font. It ends up printing all kinds of code, and lots of it. If you didn't upload a PDF file in the first place, ignore everything I say.  :-D

Go back to your original file, and re-create your PDF. On a Mac, look for Save As PDFX in the print dialog box. On a PC, look for options like "Embed Fonts." Your file will be a little bigger, but more stable because font info is built in. In this format you can use any font you want, regardless of whether it is on Lulu's list. I did.

This trick is only for PDFs. If you choose the ePub format, font imbedding is less reliable, and it's best to stick with the basic computer fonts like Georgia, Arial and Helvetica.

Click here if you want more info on ePub eBook formatting.

[petz]

I haven’t played with Ebooks yet. However, I also noticed big problems when I tried using the Lulu functions in Mozilla. However, they all seemed to go away when I switched back to using Internet Explorer or Internet Exploder, as I like to call it. I love Mozilla, but certain websites only seem to function properly in IE… life is sooo unfair.