"B" is for Bailed out by the Experts

Yesterday's travails with creating a cover for the Surge of the Wine-Dark Sea ended, as readers have noted, with my emailing James Kramer for a cover with some dimensions that wouldn't send lulu into a tizzy fit. Like lightning, James changed the cover dimensions and sent me a new file. Without any hitch, I uploaded the file, and I now have the hardcover of the art book waiting in my private folder at lulu waiting to be switched to general availability (there is still some more checking to do, and I have to upload the softcover before pulling the trigger for the actual release).

This leads to two points about being bailed out by experts:
1) Kramer is awesome. I am not sure how many people realize the role he has played behind the scenes on a lot of major projects. He is the technological force behind OSRIC 2.0, for example: it's a huge book, and Jim did all the layout for it. He also runs Usherwood Adventures, which has a full line of adventure modules - if you want to see high production values, these are tremendous. He has done the layout for 3 issues of Knockspell (2, 3, and 4), and lots of other behind the scenes work.

2) Lulu, I have to admit, needs to get kudos as well, for preventing users from accidentally creating problems for themselves. It is a pain to work with highly sensitive requirements for posting, but it would be much worse if the program allowed you to post anything -- and then discover that it doesn't emerge properly from one of the presses. So lulu gets points, if not exactly for bailing me out - for preventing me from creating problems for myself.

In any case, yesterday's adventure with the lulu cover-generation templates was fun, even though it ended up with me calling for the cavalry.

I should point out, for the sake of my own self-image here, that I'm actually pretty experienced with lulu - this was simply an excursion into an unfamiliar part of the functionality. Which is why it was fun rather than frustrating. If there's anyone out there who is contemplating putting something onto lulu, please don't be put off by my posts, which exaggerated the complexity in order to be amusing to read - the vast majority of the process is quite straightforward.

Indeed, lulu has been one of the center-posts of the surge in publishing we have seen in the last few years. Frustrating and annoying as it has been from time to time, it has actually been invaluable: technicolor vomit-screens, hieroglyphic instructions and all.

Making a cover on lulu

10:57AM, USA Central Time
I am now in the "cover designer" on lulu, which is a great big rectangle of technicolor vomit set underneath a bewildering array of buttons labeled with meaningless hieroglyphs. They are helpfully labeled with words indicating that anything I'm likely to do here will take me down a branching pathway of irretrievable mistakes, altered data, and sorrow. At the top, the very top ... in parentheses, it says, "Kid ... do you want to use the old cover designer or the advanced one-page cover designer?"

Okay, it doesn't say "Kid," but I'm already into the sort of Alice's Restaurant mode of confronting a senseless and ridiculous system of external control. And it's going to get worse. Because what I have here is a one-page cover. I'm not even allowed to wrestle with the technicolor vomit using the hieroglyph buttons and sheer willpower - I have to go and confront the ADVANCED cover generator. The technicolor vomit and the hieroglyphic buttons are obviously considered to be standard fare.

The advanced cover designer probably asks questions about which door tells the truth, which one lies ... and has an invincible demi-lich in it. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

Here we go.

"Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?"
Hell no, I'm on my way to the advanced cover designer with liches and stuff when I navigate away from this page. No, I don't want to navigate away from this page, but I have to. I hit "yes."

11:02AM USA Central Time.
I confront the advanced cover designer.
It is a blank rectangle. It says:
"The file you upload must be a PDF, JPG, GIF, or PNG. See below for exact dimensions. "

No technicolor-vomit slimes crawling in the rectangle.
No hieroglyphs.

It's quiet .... too quiet. This is exactly where you decide to search for secret doors and the ceiling falls in on you.

11:06 USA Central Time
And then ... written beneath the innocuous-looking rectangle ... comes the Gygaxian Riddle.

One-piece cover requirements:

• Your file must be a PDF, JPG, GIF, or PNG
• Spine width: 31 Postscript points wide (0.431") (129 px)
• Spine begins 657 Postscript points (9.13") (2738 px) from the left.
• Total cover width: 1345 X 900 Postscript points (18.68" X 12.50") (5604px X 3750px)
• If using an image, its resolution should be set to 300dpi

Here it is. WTF is a postscript point? Can we not use inches or millimeters, or cubits? Postscript isn't a system of measurement, it's something you write at the end of a letter when you forgot to say something or if you're trying to downplay it, like, "P.S. You are going to have trouble with this part of the process."

P.S., yes, I know it actually gave me the dimensions in inches, I'm just complaining. The actual problem is to verify inches in the dimensions of a pdf. Time to open up Photoshop and take a look at the pdf in a graphics program.

This is going to take a while.

A is also for "Continuing the Publication Process on Lulu"

So sue me, my abcedarian skills are questionable. In part one of this quick series about posting a resource onto lulu, which really did begin with the letter "A," I got as far as the point where lulu has now created a print-ready file of the interior of the art book (Surge of the Wine-Dark Sea), I checked it, and hit "Save and Continue." You have to read the comments to see the whole progression step-by-step, because I didn't want to put up a whole new post for each step.

Now we are at the part where fear grips me.

10:49AM USA Central Time
It's time to make the cover. Normally, that's not a big deal. I simply use the "old" cover designer on lulu, which is an interface which makes a lot of sense to me. Upload a jpeg for the front cover. Upload a jpeg for the back cover. Remove the text that lulu puts on there.

Not so in this case, because I've got a really nice one-piece cover from Jim Kramer, but I am not familiar with using a one-piece cover. My baby interface that I normally use won't do this; I have to venture into the world of stuff I'm not familiar with.