I never explicitly authorised them to do this, and, as far as I know, my permission was never even sought. Presumably, there's some legalese in the Lulu Terms of Service that gave them the right to perform these (what I regard as underhanded) activities without explicit consent from me.
I have now explicitly removed the EPUB files from Lulu, and will check periodically to make sure that they don't return. As best I understand it, my having removed the files from Lulu will also result in their removal from iTunes and B&N in short order.
In case you wonder why I would not want the books available, there are several issues (apart from the obvious one of their doing this without seeking explicit permission):
- As the EPUB files were auto-generated, they contained no manual corrections or interventions to improve the look on a reader.
- The PDF files contain some material that either will not autoconvert sensibly to EPUB (which is really a form of HTML) or material that should not sensibly be present in an electronic version of the book.
- The fonts and general style that Lulu chose were, frankly, embarrassingly bad.
- The prices set by Lulu were considerably higher than those I normally set for electronic books.
Category Five is the latest to be converted, and should be appearing shortly in the iTunes and B&N Nook stores.