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PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT

Why can’t I publish my manuscript?

Q I was hoping to upload a manuscript on to selfpublishing platform Lulu (www.lulu.com), which I used many years ago. I have used Word 2007 for the project. The problem is that Lulu is asking for ‘flattened fonts’. It also tells me that graphics in the Word document were too low a resolution, with Lulu insisting on 300dpi. A friend took the graphics and somehow made them 300dpi but as soon as they were put back in my version of Word they reverted to what they were previously. Is there any way around this issue? I guess that is more than one question!

Alan Whitby

A We don’t place a limit on the number of questions readers can ask, but sadly we only have limited space in which to answer them.

Let’s start with ‘flattened fonts’. We don’t know which particular error message you’ve encountered in Lulu but it sounds very much like it requires some fonts that you’ve used to be ‘embedded’ with your uploaded document.

This means whatever fonts are used in the document must also be saved as part of the document, because Lulu is otherwise unable to reproduce them. This will be for copyright reasons. When you supply Lulu with a document that contains embedded fonts, it’s merely printing what you’ve supplied – so it doesn’t have to bear the responsibility for adding any missing fonts.

The precise way to do this varies between Word versions but, in the 2007 edition, first click the Office button (top left) followed by Word Options. For the benefit of readers using a more recent edition of Word, first click File followed by Options. Next, in the left-hand navigation pane, click Save and then, in the right-hand pane, scroll down to find the ‘Preserve fidelity when sharing this). Click OK.