Workflow to Publish to Lulu

Scrivener
1

I’ve only used Scrivener for the first time just recently, and find it very helpful for organizing, etc… But I’m not telling anyone here anything new.

I’ve read previous posts about workflow, but have a question involving publishing a print and ePub book to Lulu. I know that Scrivener isn’t a desktop publishing program, so it seems the best flow would be:

  1. Do the writing in Scrivener, of course.
  2. Compile to RTF or docx.
  3. Copy the content of the RTF or docx into the Word template from Lulu.
  4. Insert many, many scanned photos and documents into the Lulu template.
  5. Add captions, put photos side by side, etc…

I know you can insert photos, scans, etc. into Scrivener, but, as others have said, ‘Scrivener isn’t a desktop publishing program’. While Word also isn’t a publishing platform, it might do the basics of what I need.

The trouble I see, is that this workflow could be done for the print book. But then I want to do an ePub for the same book. But I would have to do all of the inserting of photos again. Or at least copy the print book content into the ePub template. Am I thinking this through the right way? Or is there a better way? Thank you.

Jim

2

If it were me, I’d insert the images and captions in Scrivener, probably using linked images because I would want different resolutions for the ePub and Word versions.

Then I’d compile to Word, apply the Lulu template, and do any necessary formatting tweaks in Word. (Probably a lot of what the Lulu template requires can be accomplished with the Compile command. It can certainly manage margins, font sizes, and things like that.)

Then I’d compile to ePub and use an ePub editor to do any necessary tweaks for that format.

The whole point of the Compile command is to allow you to stay in Scrivener for as long as possible, only using a format-specific tool at the very end.

Katherine

3

I never used a word template to publish through Lulu. I compile as PDF or ePub and upload. Works from Scrivener or my preferred word processor (Pages).