Photobooks

[Hansenaz]

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).

[RedRoxx44]

@Hansenaz
Thanks for the info. I looked into it some years back but then seemed like more work than I wanted to put into it. It's enough just trying to keep up with my archives. Since I've retired I'm getting some family harassment for a calendar or specific subject book. So far I am resisting.

[tibber]

About ten years or more ago, for a few years, I did Photobooks via Costco for myself and as family gifts. Then I did DVDs. Now, youtube videos seem to work better and are a lot cheaper; altho they do take a lot of work on my part. Between that and the ancestry work I do, I consider it my legacy... such as it is.

[Jim]

I'll just leave this here.

"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away. "

[Hansenaz]

@Jim_H
So Jim, it seems like Ozymandias would be a photobooks guy, right?

[Alston_Neal]

Made me Google Ozymandias. Nice to see Mr. Hansenaz being productive in his golden years of retirement and not just wandering aimlessly in the desert. Keep up the good work.

[Jim]

@Hansenaz
He would be out there chiseling every photo into solid granite!

[Hansenaz]

@Jim_H
Granite photobooks are definitely outside this discussion since were trying to keep it cheap.
@Alston_Neal
Productivity falling, senility rising. Hey when do we see the Alston drone channel?
@tibber
Video is definitely more catchy and Youtube is the venue...plus you're good at it! Books (and photobooks) are a small niche in comparison. Costco photos was acquired by Shutterfly...they still produce a good product at a good price. They also had fastest delivery.
@RedRoxx44 You should pursue it. You've got quite a repository of amazing pictures. If you decided to curate them into "themes" or "stories" or "regions" or whatever, you could make some really nice things, pro-quality.

I think if there was a "HikeArizona epress" that hosted worthy downloadable ebooks, it could make a little money. But probably Joe's got 99 problems and an epress ain't one.

[The_Eagle]

Productivity falling, senility rising

Hey Billy, on the bright side, it gets worse.

[big_load]

This just makes me feel worse about how many photosets I owe people.

[rcorfman]

This just makes me feel worse about how many photosets I owe people.

Just scratch something on a few rocks and send them out.