Photobooks
Posted: Oct 11 2023 2:31 pm
Recently I've been making photobooks, you know those vanity projects where you organize your pictures to send to grandma? Well, I've learned a thing or two. And since I can't find any previous HAZ discussion and there's a lot of picture takers here, I decided to post this.
My goal was to make a petroglyph book to share with family and friends. I made a first draft with 200 pages (to be edited down) and realized this is going to be expensive to print. So, I cut it down to one region (58 pages) and used that to test the "print vendors". I got printed books back from five outfits (a hardcover and softcover from two of them). [ image ] They all were good enough and based mainly on price (which varied from $35-$80 for ~8x11" softcover), I decided to use Blurb. I could say plenty more about this "competition" but never mind.
Blurb's business model is a little different and it turns out to have two nice advantages:
1. If you like the looks of your book, you can check a box and put it in the Blurb bookstore. It can be publicly listed and anyone can buy it (that will mainly be you). Sort of cool that your book is now searchable, if only because you'll be able to find it!
2. More importantly, if you allow your book to be previewed, the whole thing can be read as an ebook from the Blurb site. This is a heck of a lot more convenient than sharing a link to download it. In the case of my (in the end) 166pg book, that avoids a 300Mb download. See for yourself: search “Blurb bookstore” then “My Arizona Petroglyphs”. Click preview. (Forum rules say no links allowed.)
One other thing about "methods". I made mine using Powerpoint because I was familiar with it. This is not the norm - most vendors provide you templates and you plug your pictures into their "slots". With the Powerpoint approach you compose whole pages (each page can then be a .jpg) so you don't use their templates and can basically send it to any vendor. Powerpoint also allows you to save as a .pdf so you automatically have an ebook you can send or share. No vendor needed. Let's face it, for a photobook, viewing pictures on a screen is a better idea than waiting for and paying $$ for hardcopy.
And one other thing about composing in Powerpoint. You can save a slideshow or presentation with audio and post to Youtube if you want. I haven’t tried that (yet).
My goal was to make a petroglyph book to share with family and friends. I made a first draft with 200 pages (to be edited down) and realized this is going to be expensive to print. So, I cut it down to one region (58 pages) and used that to test the "print vendors". I got printed books back from five outfits (a hardcover and softcover from two of them). [ image ] They all were good enough and based mainly on price (which varied from $35-$80 for ~8x11" softcover), I decided to use Blurb. I could say plenty more about this "competition" but never mind.
Blurb's business model is a little different and it turns out to have two nice advantages:
1. If you like the looks of your book, you can check a box and put it in the Blurb bookstore. It can be publicly listed and anyone can buy it (that will mainly be you). Sort of cool that your book is now searchable, if only because you'll be able to find it!
2. More importantly, if you allow your book to be previewed, the whole thing can be read as an ebook from the Blurb site. This is a heck of a lot more convenient than sharing a link to download it. In the case of my (in the end) 166pg book, that avoids a 300Mb download. See for yourself: search “Blurb bookstore” then “My Arizona Petroglyphs”. Click preview. (Forum rules say no links allowed.)
One other thing about "methods". I made mine using Powerpoint because I was familiar with it. This is not the norm - most vendors provide you templates and you plug your pictures into their "slots". With the Powerpoint approach you compose whole pages (each page can then be a .jpg) so you don't use their templates and can basically send it to any vendor. Powerpoint also allows you to save as a .pdf so you automatically have an ebook you can send or share. No vendor needed. Let's face it, for a photobook, viewing pictures on a screen is a better idea than waiting for and paying $$ for hardcopy.
And one other thing about composing in Powerpoint. You can save a slideshow or presentation with audio and post to Youtube if you want. I haven’t tried that (yet).