More adventures in epub

The cover update to Pilikia is coming along. The one snag was in getting an ISBN for the book.  I looked at Bowker and then at Lulu. Lulu was cheaper ($98) and faster, so I ordered the number from Lulu. It turned out that Lulu wasn't faster. I immediately received an email that the order had been received and that I could track it. When I went to the tracking, I received a message that the order had been shipped. Great! 24-hour turn around. Well, it might have been shipped, but it didn't arrive.

I thought the number would arrive by email. After all, it is only a number. When it didn't, I looked for it in snail mail. Maybe, since it's an official document, it needed to come by regular mail. After 10 days, I checked with customer support, but all I could find was a link to track my order, which continued to say it had been shipped.  Finally, I found a customer service request form on the Lulu site and filled it out. A day later I heard from somebody in support saying I should reply to the email he had sent on August 19.

There was no email on Aug. 19. The only emails were the order received and the order tracking email which arrived on Aug. 18. I replied to that and to the support guy's email but still didn't hear anything.

Finally, I sent another customer support form and this time I heard from Shauna S. She included a link in her email to an online form I needed to fill out. That form asked for book and author info. Just the type of stuff I would expect to supply for an ISBN (and which I think I had supplied earlier.) This time, it seemed to work. Two days later, I received the new ISBN, about a month after requesting it. Next time, I'll go with Bowker.

The ISBN is one thing. I also want a barcode on the cover of the book. Getting the barcode, I discovered, is easy. I went to Wolframalpha (www.wolframalpha.com), entered "isbn barcode" followed by the isbn into the search window and it produced a barcode instantaneously in the form of a GIF that I gave to my cover artist.

The only hurdle now, is one last edit on the inside front material and the book will be ready.