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Lulu.com Launches the World's First Open Publishing Platform via Publicly Available APIs

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Raleigh, NC, May 2, 2011 – Lulu.com, the leader in Open Publishing, 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.”

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About Lulu: Lulu (www.lulu.com) is the leader in open publishing, empowering creators of all kinds — individuals, publishers, educators and enterprises — to publish and sell while enabling buyers to discover new knowledge. Powered by an Internet retail site, global distribution system and social content discovery engine, Lulu helps creators make and monetize content in a variety of formats, including physical books and eBooks. It connects them to buyers on Lulu.com and in third-party channels, including Amazon.com and Apple’s iBookstore. With the recent release of Lulu's Open Publishing APIs, which enable publishers, businesses, and developers to create web applications, powered by Lulu, and marketed under their own brand names, Lulu is redefining the future for all publishers and providing creators with even more freedom.  

About Aspose: Aspose are file format experts. They offer a powerful set of file management components with which developers can create applications which can open, edit, create and save some of the most popular business file formats.  Supported formats include Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, PDF documents, Flash presentations and Project files.

Aspose Pty Ltd has been operating since 2002. The headquarters are in Australia, and the company has teams in USA, Scotland, Ukraine and Pakistan. 

Contact: AJ McDonald
pr@lulu.com
919.447.3290