Lulu.com Launches New Open Publishing Platform

Lulu.com (http://www.lulu.com/) is releasing the final pieces of its full publishing platform. Now, anyone can be a publisher without having to spend the years and invest the dollars formerly required to build book printing, ebook creation, book and ebook distribution, and book selling businesses.

The Lulu Open Publishing Platform is accessible via application programming interfaces (APIs) enabling publishers, website builders, and entrepreneurial content owners to easily publish the books they and their authors have created. "Lulu is making all the tools we have built over the last eight years available to anyone and everyone to better serve their markets," says Lulu CEO Bob Young. "Our remarkable global book printing network, ebook creation tools, and distribution services are now available to a new generation of publishers and entrepreneurs to serve their markets at lower cost, more profitably than ever before possible."

Lulu's Open Publication APIs enable publishers, businesses, and developers to create web applications, powered by Lulu, and marketed under their own brand names. Today, Lulu is announcing the final pieces of the platform - two new APIs to complete the publishing cycle.

The first, a new Document Conversion API, will convert any Word, RTF, and HTML document to a print-ready PDF. These document conversion tools rely in part on Aspose Corp's world-class solution for Word document conversion. Lulu makes that solution available to anybody who wants to publish a book.

The other is Lulu's new E-Commerce API. This will allow developers to place orders for their users programmatically. Developers will be able to sell their books from their own sites, keeping control of the user's information. After the sale is made, the developer can send the order information to Lulu and access an established global network to print and ship the book directly to customers. The developer is able to easily fulfill all their orders. According to Lulu's Director of Technology, Ryan Bloom, "This is our most requested API, and marks a big step forward for Lulu." Bloom added; "Due to the importance of all aspects of online commerce security, Lulu is looking forward to working closely with those partners who sign on to use our new E-Commerce API tools."

Amazon Books Launches Author Interview Series

Amazon.com has premiered "Author Interviews@Amazon," the new author interview series that will be available in a new content destination called The Backstory (www.amazon.com/thebackstory). Author Interviews@Amazon launches with five video interviews, including celebrity chef and James Beard Award-winning Tom Douglas, New York Times bestselling debut author Joshua Foer, young adult authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, and Gossip Girl producer John Stephens.

New author interviews will be announced via the Amazon.com Books Facebook page and on Omnivoracious.com, the Amazon.com Books blog. Customers will be able to post questions for visiting authors that will be incorporated into each interview. All edited videos will be available on the book's detail page and accessible from archives in The Backstory.

"We're extremely lucky to have fascinating and talented authors gracing our hallways here at Amazon and taking time to chat with us," said Mari Malcolm, Managing Editor, books at Amazon.com. "We love these conversations so much that we wanted to share them with our customers. We hope that customers will take the opportunity to submit questions on our Amazon Books Facebook page or through our blog, Omnivoracious. They can also contact us at authorinterviews@amazon.com with questions for visiting authors."

The Backstory will feature Author Interviews@Amazon interviews and other exclusive author content such as guest reviews, interviews, authors' favorite playlists, recipes and more.