RALEIGH, N.C., Sept. 18, 2007 -- Five years and over one million registered users have made Lulu.com one of the fastest growing websites and the premier digital content platform on the Internet. So what's Lulu to do for an encore? Take the site -- tear it up and make it better!
Lulu is expanding its audience through a new site design, enhanced user experience as well as improved functionality and even more marketing resources, making it easier and more fun than ever to publish.
"Lulu's success is a direct result of the creativity of hundreds of thousands of authors, photographers, musicians and makers of video," said Bob Young founder and CEO of Lulu.com. These individuals and organizations are creating new works that enrich the lives of their readers, viewers and customers. This complete re-launch of our site will enable Lulu's users to create, buy, sell and share better content faster, further enriching the lives of all of us across the globe."
So what's really new? Improving upon the already innovative Lulu technology, the site's new functionality -- Lulu 2.0- includes a new interface, a new and easier wizard flow, as well as a continued commitment to localization and Lulu's ever- growing global community.
"We needed to make the many features of our site easier for our users to find," said Young. "Our new site design has moved Lulu from supplying features -such as books or CD's- to one that supplies solutions -such as poetry books, technical manuals and travel guides- to our users.
What else you ask? Lulu.com is enhancing how people control and interact with their own projects by introducing the Lulu Studio (TM), a Flash- based content building tool that not only provides a web-based typesetting tool, but also provides a platform for users to -for the first time -- be able to incorporate licensed images into their own works in a flexible, cost - effective manner.
The release of Lulu Studio(TM) brings new themes, more paper options, built-in page and cover templates along with a higher resolution digital photo printing process. These higher quality photo books are the first Lulu Studio(TM) offering, with calendars being added in time for the holiday season.
Lulu is also now offering users the opportunity to enhance their content by accessing licensed material from the vast libraries of Getty Images on a pay-per-image basis that will be built into the cost of the book. Getty Images, the world's leading provider of licensed images online has made a library of over 100,000 images available to Lulu users at the pay -per-image cost of $1.00 for cover use and .30 for inside page use.
This partnership will allow creators to access professional images that were previously only available for thousands of dollars. Lulu's authors will be able to include these copyrighted images in their books for only pennies per book sold, allowing them to create a more valuable and marketable product.
The new Marketing Services section makes it easier than ever to promote and sell books, calendars, music or video. Need press release tips? Interested in making your book available to reviewers? It is all there and much more.
Lulu already makes it easy for authors to reach e-book readers by offering our eBook Optimization service that turns their text into a Sony Reader- friendly file that's ready for download. Lulu 2.0 expands this offering by making it possible for any book to be formatted to read on an iPhone as well. Once only available to large publishers, now individual creators can publish and sell their books as a download to iPhone users.
As Young says, "The features are tremendous, but the benefits are even greater. Empowering anyone to create and profit from their work is what Lulu has been about from the very beginning. 'Lulu 2.0' puts better tools in the hands of our users to make it simpler than ever to bring their work to their audience."