Out with the old (Storefront), in with the new (Author Spotlight)

[David Woodward]

Lulu is closing down the old storefronts and moving everyone over to the new digs, Author Spotlight. Over the next week or so, we will be sending out emails to all of the authors who haven’t moved over to an Author Spotlight. As the email says:

Author Spotlight is a snazzier version of the online storefront you received when you signed up for Lulu. It's easier to use with a cleaner, more streamlined design that incorporates Youtube videos, Facebook, and Twitter. With new layouts and sorting options, you'll have more control over the titles your customers see first and can sell more books. It also plays nicer with Google and other search engines to help you better market your work and get more visibility all over the Web.

If you want to get a head start on moving over to an Author Spotlight, you will want to save any images and text from your old storefront. We’ll move over all your books. To transition to your new Author Spotlight page just click here.

On September 6th we will retire all old storefronts and move all of your published titles over to your very own Author Spotlight.

For instructions on how to set up your Author Spotlight,  check out our list of FAQs.

[Ken Anderson]

David, I mentioned several months ago that it would be nice to be able to embed some HTML in the Spotlight as one could with the Storefront. Could you pass that on to the design team please.

[wolfsinger]

Is there a special trick to get it to accept an image in the block for avatar - because I can never seem to get it to show. It appears to upload - but nothing happens.

Are there size restrictions that I'm missing?

Carol

[Nohoarii]

David, on the the layout page (on spotlight) there is the option to sort how you want to list your products. However, it does not matter how you sort them as this only happens on the first page and if, like me, you have multiple pages, the following pages always default to 'sorted by relevance'. This means that not all of my products are visible unless I sort all the pages by relevance which defeats the object. In fact, if you go to the second page and hit the back button the first page reverts to 'sorted by relevance' even if you have previously sorted it by other criteria. On the old storefront there was more author control and you could list products in the order that you wanted them. With spotlight it is just random. A regressive step, I'm afraid. Is there any chance of sorting out this bug in the programme? I have written numerous times without response.

Trevor

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/Nohoarii

[kevinlomas]

So where are the improvements? This is even more basic than the Storefronts.

[Nohoarii]

And not as attractive. Storefronts were very basic but at least they resembled a little a personal website.

[David Woodward]

Ken,

Did you put that in Suggest? I think I remember seeing something along those lines.

Carol,

Profile picture - 100 pixels wide by 120 pixels tall.

Logo or other image - 230 pixels wide by 120 pixels tall.

PM me if it doesn't work out.

Trevor,

That definitely looks like a bug. I'll report it to our engineering team. Thanks!

Kevin,

New features include the ability to add videos. A big improvement was the search engine optimization. There were a lot of under the hood improvements as well.

Thanks for your input everyone!
-David

[Nohoarii]

Good point, Ken, because we can no longer add a flag counter, for example (if you want that sort of thing).

[kevinlomas]

New features include the ability to add videos. A big improvement was the search engine optimization. There were a lot of under the hood improvements as well.

They are books, why would anyone wish to add a video for them? It seems a pointless step now you no longer do DVDs and CDs etc. Granted there may be things in the software we cannot see, but search optimisation should including adding invisible tags to our Spotlight pages, but we cannot do that can we? The main thing you have done is what everywhere else has done, added 'easy' links to all the social networking places under the asumption everyone uses them! I for one refuse to ask a million total strangers to be my 'friend'! 

What you should have done is give us total product list manipulation and more control over the look of the page/s, not less!

We have suggested improvements many times, but it seems that the only suggestions you take up are those you already had planned!

[David Woodward]

Thanks for your feedback Kevin. I'll make sure to pass it on to the Product team.

-David