After running my web site for a couple of years and amassing a lot of photos, I started thinking about what I could do with all the output besides making web pages. I took a stab at making my own print-on-demand books through www.lulu.com and suddenly a new hobby was born.
The thinking that goes into making a book is similar to making a web site. You basically come up with a theme, choose the pictures and design a layout. With print-on-demand, you can do simple layouts in your word processing program which means you don’t have to learn desktop publishing. When you’re done, you convert the word processing document to a PDF, then upload it to the print-on-demand web site.
It doesn’t cost you anything up front, and you can order your books at a (somewhat) reasonable cost and give them away as gifts or even try to sell them. The print quality isn’t top-notch, but it’s okay. I sold a few at Open Studios last fall. You can’t really sell them in stores because if the store wants 50% of the sale price, you probably can’t charge enough to make a profit.
When I started my web site it was almost completely devoted to Mt. Tamalpais, so my first book became "Seasons on Mt. Tamalpais." After a year or so of shooting at my local beach, I did "On the Beach: A Celebration of Ocean Beach, San Francisco." A small project on the Golden Gate National Recreation Area became a third book. My next one will be California Favorites of shots from all over the state, and I’ve got San Francisco Bay Area and Urban San Francisco books in the hopper.
Anyway, I highly recommend making your own books. It forces you to think about your work in a way that gives it cohesion, you get a lasting document that's easy to share, and it’s also plain old enjoyable to see your work printed in a book.
I finally got a look at a color (no monochrome) book made by Shutterfly and am impressed enough to try one. I've done one with Shared Ink (100% monochrome), and the quality is superb but the cost prohibitive. I think Shutterfly is considerably cheaper. I've heard less than stellar reports from Lulu users.
Shutterfly makes good prints in general for cheap, I use them for family snapshots and portraits. So I have no doubt about recommending what Michael said.
I just went to the Shutterfly site to look into their photo books and couldn't find out anything without becoming a member. I was wondering if their photo books allow you to have pages of text and/or text-photo combinations, or if it's just page after page of photos with no text.
I've used the shutterfly books and I thought they were pretty good for a reasonable price. They have different layout (including text) but I found it more flexible to lay out my own pages and upload the entire page as a full-page image.
You may also want to check out all of Shutterfly's competitors. I think they probably all offer books of one kind or another. A couple I've used (for photos, not books) are :
If you've done your own Photoshop work, you do have to watch whether or not the place is going to apply curves and constrast to your shot. I think with Shutterfly and Kodak, you have to change a setting so they don't do that. With Winkflash and MPix they don't do anything by default, and with Snapfish you can't choose not to have adjustments made.
The Shutterfly thing is pretty much a photo album, which is a little different than a Lulu book where you have a lot more latitude in designing. Lulu is also very much cheaper. For pure photo albums I just make my own prints and put them in an inexpensive portfolio thing like this: http://www.dickblick.com/zz152/30/
As Ana noted, John, you could create pages in a different program and upload them as images. That lets you do anything you want, while still getting good photo quality pages in the book. (I'm assuming that's the problem with Lulu? The paper and printing method?)
Lulu does appear to offer Photo Books, which look similar to what Shutterfly or the others offer.
Discussion
7 repliesThe thinking that goes into making a book is similar to making a web site. You basically come up with a theme, choose the pictures and design a layout. With print-on-demand, you can do simple layouts in your word processing program which means you don’t have to learn desktop publishing. When you’re done, you convert the word processing document to a PDF, then upload it to the print-on-demand web site.
It doesn’t cost you anything up front, and you can order your books at a (somewhat) reasonable cost and give them away as gifts or even try to sell them. The print quality isn’t top-notch, but it’s okay. I sold a few at Open Studios last fall. You can’t really sell them in stores because if the store wants 50% of the sale price, you probably can’t charge enough to make a profit.
When I started my web site it was almost completely devoted to Mt. Tamalpais, so my first book became "Seasons on Mt. Tamalpais." After a year or so of shooting at my local beach, I did "On the Beach: A Celebration of Ocean Beach, San Francisco." A small project on the Golden Gate National Recreation Area became a third book. My next one will be California Favorites of shots from all over the state, and I’ve got San Francisco Bay Area and Urban San Francisco books in the hopper.
Anyway, I highly recommend making your own books. It forces you to think about your work in a way that gives it cohesion, you get a lasting document that's easy to share, and it’s also plain old enjoyable to see your work printed in a book.
http://www.shutterfly.com/shop/product_c18000/Photo_Books
I've used the shutterfly books and I thought they were pretty good for a reasonable price. They have different layout (including text) but I found it more flexible to lay out my own pages and upload the entire page as a full-page image.
Winkflash
MPix
Snapfish
Kodak
If you've done your own Photoshop work, you do have to watch whether or not the place is going to apply curves and constrast to your shot. I think with Shutterfly and Kodak, you have to change a setting so they don't do that. With Winkflash and MPix they don't do anything by default, and with Snapfish you can't choose not to have adjustments made.
Lulu does appear to offer Photo Books, which look similar to what Shutterfly or the others offer.