I have just published a music manuscript, complete with the scores throughout, through Lulu - on behalf of a friend. To get it to the stage where I could work with it was hard enough, as the actual musical was in one pdf file, and the first and last pages in another. My friend's son tried to get it done using Lulu, but drew a blank.

Scanning all the pages in separately did the trick. Setting it all up didn't take too long either, and the converting took less than a minute - unlike uploading it to Lulu. There nothing happened. For hour after hour it refused to upload. My patience was wearing thin, but I wasn't going to be beaten. It's always something simple stopping everything in its tracks, and so it was this time, too. The fonts and graphis needed to be embedded. That was all there was to it. I had the wrong box ticked.

I didn't use CutePDF this time, but as my system is Vista, I saved the entire document, excluding the cover, as 'PDF or XPS' file, clicked on Options and made sure I had the box for ISO 19005-1 Compliant (PDF/A) clicked, instead of the Bitmap one. Ask me what it actually means, and I'll be stuck. I don't know. I just know that it works.

Back on Lulu it took half an hour from beginning the work to the book being published (albeit set to private as of yet). For a techno phobe it felt brilliant!

Sharing tips like this Marit is a real boon.  I hate to think of the hours and hours of frustration I've endured when a someone sharing this kind of info would have solved the problem in seconds.