Lulu Distributor Does It AGAIN!!

This is part of what I received from lulu.com:

"During the review of your book "The Ultimate British Comics Gold Collection" (Project ID: 1290321) for distribution we received an error notification from our distribution partner:

- The title on the cover and/or the title page of your manuscript does not match the title entered in your project metadata.  The title listed on your cover and title page must exactly match the title entered when your project was created.

- There are images and/or text that are not clear enough to print. All images must have a resolution of at least 300dpi; any images that do not meet this requirement must be removed or replaced."

Now here is the fun: the, uh, "images" are the comic strip pages or text pages which consist of illustrations -the pages are all a standard 300 dpi.  They print perfectly.  BUT the "distribution partner" wants me to remove those illoes and make each a full sized 300 dpi page.  It cannot mean anything else.  What this means is easy to explain.

If you open up a TV guide or magazine you will see one or more photos linked to a TV programme. That has been scanned or sourced and placed into the page -the page would be 300 dpi (some people ask for 600 dpi images/pages but that does NOT improve the quality).  The whole magazine is put together in a programme like Adobe or whatever and the electronic file is sent to the printer and it's all auto printed from start to finish.  Now, those photos are NOT 300 dpi. It is part of the whole, say, 300 dpi page.  You cannot have a document prepared for publishing where the page is 300 dpi and you have, say, three images that must ALSO be 300 dpi.  That does not make any sense....logically, you cannot have a 300 dpi page that contain images that must each be 300 dpi and show up as such. That's 1200 dpi on a page.......

It is a nonsense.  You'd get a migraine trying to work out how that could be done!

Every page in the book prints perfectly -I have a copy here looking at.  And here is where lulu.com is at fault as the pdf "facilitator".  If you upload a file to lulu.com in pdf format EVERY page must be the exact same size.  When I first started I had two books rejected straight away because I was new at this.  WHY were those pages rejected? Because they were 2mm -TWO MILLIMETRES- larger than the other pages in the book.  You cannot get round this because lulu.com blocks the file every time.

As a result the size of EVERY page is double or triple checked by me before it even goes into a pdf format -and I double check those pdf pages!

There is another thing the "distribution partner" wants changed.  They do not like that page borders are not exactly .5".  The Gold Collection consists of comics from a period when there was no standard size format (mainly due to a little war going on back in the 1940s).  But ALL pages have a good border width because I'm kind of "anal" about these things. To give every single page a standard .5" border would mean compressing or stretching pages and the end result -crap.

So, I have to replace all these unidentified pages with ones .....uh....well, 300 dpi and with any images from text features removed which means I would need to re-write all those text features as those images are part of the page....oh, and measure that every single page has a .5" border.

My response: F*CK YOU.

Am I going to do this with all 405 pages so that the "distribution partner" and lulu.com can take over 75% of the cost of the book?  No. Just no.

So if you want to buy a book at £20 cheaper than these morons were asking but will not be able to supply go to my online store where it is CURRENTLY only £18.40 -the absolute minimum they will let me charge!

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/the-ultimate-british-comics-gold-collection/paperback/product-22041282.html

And there is a great Ben Dilworth Iron Warrior cover!