Lulu.com Novel Formatter?

[hugh]

This has NOTHING to do with LibriVox (maybe it does? oh wait, maybe it does...see later) ... But does anyone have any interest in building an open source GPL software that:

-takes a txt file
-converts it into LuLu.com-novel-format PDF
-including pagination
-maybe with some options on font/style etc.

I was thinking this had nothing to do with LV, but maybe, sure, we could make LV books to go along with a CD ... and sell em at cost thru LULU. more books for the people.

The other application would be just to help unpublished novelists use lulu more easily.

PS: www.lulu.com is a cheap easy way to self-publish. I a one-off 250p text-only book costs min $8, on top of which the seller can add a royalty as high as they like. so you could sell at $20 and get $16 out of it. Says Lulu:

Lulu provides you with the tools to publish and sell your books online, but it is up to you to do all the formatting and layout of your manuscript before you publish it on Lulu.

DISCLAIMER: I've got a unpublished manuscript I'm trying to get published, and admittedly this tool might come in handy for me personally - but the interest is rather publishing in general and what a powerful tool this would be for everybody - not just me. It will help do for book publishing what podcasting did for radio, and blogging did for feature-writing.

[raynr]

Do you know Latex? It is a typesetting program to create professional documents and books, nevertheless for free (public license). This program converts plain text in documents of any layout (much more beautiful than e.g. Word).

In short: Latex separates the layout from the text. What you ask for is basically a Latex template. The author only has to specify the logic structure of the text (e.g. chapter headings), but you would have to do that somehow with any program. The latex files look very confusing at the first glance, but if you are provided with a template, you only have to fill out the gaps. Example:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\title{specify title}
\date{}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
fill in text
\end{document}

This is a very simple example, but you can define a template that will produce a whole book with a professional layout only by filling out the gaps. If you write articles for scientific journals, they often give you such a template, it produces exactly the layout the journal wants.

Here's a description at Wikipedia (caution: perhaps unreliable ):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX

Here is the project site: http://www.latex-project.org/

Here is an example for (very simple) text:
http://latex.olympus.het.brown.edu/sample2e.pdf
and the "source" (it has the ending .tex, but is pure .txt)
http://latex.olympus.het.brown.edu/sample2e.tex

To show you the flexibility and the beautiful layout, a demo of a poster, it is again generated from pure text, where you normally just fill in the gaps. http://andreas.welcomes-you.com/projects/a0poster/demo/poster.pdf

If you want to make your own designs and write your own complex texts, you have to invest some time learning it. I'm a big fan of Latex since I wrote my thesis. It would have been a horror writing it in Word. Latex has many other advantages, e.g. generating of a table of contents, managing citiations and bibliography...

I hope it was not too confusing, and that it is the kind of program you ment.

[hugh]

hi raynr,

I'll take a look at that tool - but what I am thinking is easier I think - like an xml template. You take a 105,000 word txt file.

Add some simple XML-y mark up: <title> <author> <chapter> <chapter title> <copyright notice>

Perhaps you have to mark the paragraphs as well.

You make some simple Font choices (book title, chapter headings, main text, pagination)
You make some Format choices (chapter format, pagination, headder? footer?)

You plunk the lightly marked-up txt into the FORMATTER and then press go. The FORMATTER produces your file in - say openoffice format that you can edit? You can then export to pdf, format lulu needs.

maybe this is a plug-in for open office. I'll go suggest on the openoffice forum too!

Hugh.

[kri]

Isn't there a way to set up a template and do that sort of thing in Open Office itself? I don't mean through the XML means that you mentioned, but through Open Office itself.

[hugh]

a good question! ha easier to get smart LVers to answer that for me instead of checking openoffice.

but: does it give you novel format that lulu.com accepts? if so v cool I will check.

[pberinstein]

How do you know there isn't a plug-in for Open Office that will do this already?

[raynr]

I didn't suggest Latex only because of it's great techniques and possibilities (yes, I got carried away a little bit with that). It's about the basic text layout. I will try to explain it.

Did you ever wonder why the pages in a professional book from your shelf always look better than everything you print out in Word or OpenOffice? Firstly it's because of the compiler in the layout program. Word and OpenOffice are not able to produce a really good output. Here is an example for the difference:
http://www.ctan.org/documents/zen/zen.pdf
There seem to be only subtle differences, but the TEX (TEX is the engine behind Latex) text looks "more right". For example, the line spacing is better, Latex has ligatures (two letters merged together, see e.g. fi in the second word of the example text).
Secondly, the layout is done mainly by the program. You can of course change it, but the (standard) layouts are made by typesetters. No non-professional can do this.

If you just want to make a kind of template for OpenOffice that matches the specifications of lulu.com, I don't think that this is a great problem and OpenOffice has a built-in pdf-export. But if you really want a good layout, there is no other way than to buy a commercial typesetting program or to use the free latex project.

You have to invest a little time in it, but it is worth it and if you need help, just ask. And you can try it online, before you install the compiler:
http://nirvana.informatik.uni-halle.de/~thuering/php/latex-online/latex.php?sprachauswahl=2&aufruf=19847
Just copy a text in the window. You only need three commands:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\begin{document}
text
\end{document}

(a new paragraph begins if you leave a blank line in your text, and a new chapter begins with the command \chapter{chaptertitle)
choose output format "pdf", hit compile and view the pdf-file.

[hugh]

OK so if it is GPL someone should be able to build something on top of it to make a FORMAT-A-NOVEL-FOR-DUMMIES script, right? This is what I am thinking.

John is a writer & wishes to publish on lulu.com ... but can't figure out how to format it the way they want. So he has to pay someone to do that or spend hours learnign a difficult layout software.

Or he goes to Easy-Novel-Format.com, plunks his text file into a user uploader (marked up as I suggest), above. Perhaps with some simple format settings. and then ENF.com spits out a pdf in the layout that he wants, that he can download - or send direct to Lulu.com.

Now John can publish his book easily.

So I'm not really all that interested in whether *I* can use LaTeX but rather whether it can be renedered foolproof for non-tech writers who wish to publish their book.

What I am thinking here would do for publishing what podcasting did for audio. Make it so anyone could publish. WikiBooks for instance.

The technology may be there but it is not easy enough yet for people to use.

[raynr]

Yes, I think you could do that. Take a look at the online Latex in my last post:
http://nirvana.informatik.uni-halle.de/~thuering/php/latex-online/latex.php?sprachauswahl=2&aufruf=19847

It would be something similar, but more with more options and more easy to use: you upload a simple text file (copy it in a window like in the online Latex would be unhandy for a whole novel).

Easy-Novel-Format.com would let you choose a layout, add the required syntax at the end and the beginning and compile it on their server using Latex and give you the finished pdf-book.

If you only have got plain text (without complex tables, figures, citations, etc.) there is only very litte the author would have to do. He would have to know just a few basic commands for the logic of the text, e.g. \chapter{}
I don't think you can avoid that. Somehow Easy-Novel-Format.com has to know where the chapters are.

I think something like that would be the best approach: you don't have to invent your own layout program, but can make use of a ready available professional program and get easily great results.

The whole Easy-Novel-Format.com task would not be that complex. You just need a friendly user interface for an already existing program. A skilled programmer could do that easily.

[hugh]

The whole Easy-Novel-Format.com task would not be that complex. You just need a friendly user interface for an already existing program. A skilled programmer could do that easily.

any takers???