Submitted Manuscript to LuLu

April 8, 2009

Last Friday, April 3, I tried to submit the manuscript to Borders Personal Publishing. I had everything done and ready. I had to do a new cover because the existing cover did not work and the designer has gone AWOL. He won't return my messages. I tried purchasing the program and it did not work. I tried several times. Nothing. I was pretty pissed off. I was trying to get this done before leaving for Sloughhouse for another weekend of shooting at a dog show. I sent in an email and later that morning received a message that the program had been discontinued. I was fuming. I had done all that work for nothing.

She sent me a link for more programs they have through LuLu. I took a look at those on Monday after I got the photos up from the show. I choose the cheapest program, which was identical to the program from Borders, except LuLu was about $60 more expensive.

I signed up for that. I got an email from LuLu with instructions on how to submit the manuscript and how to fill out the form online.

It took me a couple of days to create the index since that had never been done. That was one of the most interesting exercises I have ever done. That definitely needs to be done by the author because that details the book page by page. It was tedious but interesting to see what I picked as important in a phrase that I thought a reader might need to find the information. I had to really comb through each page paragraph by paragraph finding what I thought were the key phrases.

In the end, I think I did pretty good. First I pulled all the headlines and sub headlines. Then I went through it a second time and pulled all the breed names and small key words and key phrases. Then I had to go through the index by itself and clean up the mistakes. That was gruelling because I had to delete and recreate the index each time so I could be sure the correction was made and put into the right place. But it was necessary to do.

I then had to go through and correction all the formatting that the indexing caused. Everything had to be in 12 point Times Roman and all headings and subheadings had to be one point size large and bolded. I had to check everything. That was gruelling.

Finally, late Wednesday evening, I filled out the online forms and uploaded everything. Now, all I have to do is wait and wait and wait to hear from LuLu about if there is anything else to do.