Posted by Dena Sanders on January 4, 2008 at 8:47 PM
Hi All,
Do you ever publish your own book(s)for yourself? I started doing that a few years ago as a way to look back on my year or capture a special vacation (2 wks in Alaska), etc. I've been tickled with the results - everything looks better when it's in a bound book.
For those of you who haven't seen a book, here's a link to the one I did to recap 2007. The quality online is bad, but the printed ones look great.
http://www.mypublisher.com/bookstore/book_viewer.py?d=tq%3Ey-cppl%60je%3E3211848
I especially like it because there are so many little shots I take throughout the year that aren't "wall material", but they still capture the mood or the essence of my experience. I tend to forget those little moments because they're stuck on my hard drive, but with the book on my coffee table, I see them more often.
I've liked the two services I've tried (MyPublisher, Blurb) but I was wondering if anyone has found a service that lets you completely create the templates and font sizes, instead of choosing one from a list. That's what I'd really like. I'd love to hear from anyone who's tried it and what they think.
With the advent of online and on-demand publishers this market has really taken off and it is a great way to put your images in print. We just started teaching a unit about this very thing in all of our photo workshops, and include books made from five different publishers. There must be 100 of them out there now and some do allow you to start with a blank page and design everything from scratch. One way to do this if you don't have any page layout software is to simply design each page as a photo in photoshop (with fonts and any layout you want), then you can just upload the image and it will be the entire page. This market will continue to expand, and it is a great way for photographers to get a book "published" without really having to jump through all of the hoops that a real book takes. You won't ever be able to sell these books at bookstores, but for some it is plenty good enough...
Posted by Dena Sanders on January 4, 2008 at 9:15 PM
Hi Tim,
Don't know why I didn't think about designing the page, as you suggested - great idea! Thanks for your info.
MPIX is a division of Millers that has MyPhotoBooks software that you can download and design a book. www.mpix.com. It has templates, but it also lets you start with a blank page, add and resize photos, add text and edit the font, edit the number of pages, etc. You can choose the size of your book and hard or soft cover. The soft cover lets you print the outside, too. It might be what you are looking for if you don't want to create each page individually in Photoshop. I have not ordered a book from them, but I have ordered prints and business cards. Their printing is usually very good. I have had an image here and there that I didn't like, but they happily re-printed them at no charge. I don't know if they would do that for books, though. I doubt it.
Nice Dena. I enjoyed viewing and found this to be a real neat idea. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by Merle Cook on January 5, 2008 at 11:01 AM
Hey Dena, Nice book. Our youngest son and his wife have a hard book done each year of their marriage to document the highlights of the year. I think he uses MPIX and his books all look very professional and have a good quality.
Thanks for letting us look at your book.javascript:%20x()
I used Blurb in the fall of 2006, before MyPublisher was available. I did a trip book, made two copies - one hardbound( ~$35), one soft (~$25). The quality was fine, but not great, as it was mostly a test. I wanted to see how easy it is to create such books and review the quality, with the idea of using these POD tools for creating some type of wedding albums. I'd do it again, and I'd look at the ease/quality of MyPublisher, too. I also checked out Exlibris and Asuka Books, but felt that the up-front costs (hundreds, thousands of dollars) were significantly more than what I wanted to pay for the quantity of books (hundreds) that I wanted.
Good luck,
Tim!
Posted by Dena Sanders on January 5, 2008 at 6:30 PM
Hi everyone,
Thanks for all your input, I'll have to go check out MPIX and give it a try!
Posted by Glenn Wheeler on January 6, 2008 at 10:30 PM
Dena,
I'll try and follow up on the MPIX/Millers suggestion. I have had some printed through Millers and was very pleased with the results, especially after I started designing the pages myself in Photoshop as Tim E. and others have suggested.
There was only one image in the entire book that I was a little (very little) displeased with a color tint. But, the rest of the book was fine. Miller's even allows you to design a hard cover using images.
We only printed three copies of the book and donated one to an organization for their auction. My plan was to keep one for ourselves then sell the other one myself to hopefully help defray the printing costs. I was worried about the quality for that reason. But, the two we sold (one at the auction and one ourselves) each brought $400, so the quality is there....
Hope that helps.
Glenn
Posted by Tim Buchanan on January 7, 2008 at 9:17 AM
Our own nature photographers network has this informative link about book publishing:
Dena you have some great images in your book and did a nice job on the layout also.
This is on my list to try just haven't taken the time yet.
Thank you
Posted by Wayne Rhodus on January 8, 2008 at 1:34 PM
Dena, I thought your book was awesome! I really need to think about doing this myself, but then again I'd need some decent pictures! Thanks for sharing and starting this thread. It's given me some info and a push to pursue this too.
Discussion
11 repliesDo you ever publish your own book(s)for yourself? I started doing that a few years ago as a way to look back on my year or capture a special vacation (2 wks in Alaska), etc. I've been tickled with the results - everything looks better when it's in a bound book.
For those of you who haven't seen a book, here's a link to the one I did to recap 2007. The quality online is bad, but the printed ones look great.
http://www.mypublisher.com/bookstore/book_viewer.py?d=tq%3Ey-cppl%60je%3E3211848
I especially like it because there are so many little shots I take throughout the year that aren't "wall material", but they still capture the mood or the essence of my experience. I tend to forget those little moments because they're stuck on my hard drive, but with the book on my coffee table, I see them more often.
I've liked the two services I've tried (MyPublisher, Blurb) but I was wondering if anyone has found a service that lets you completely create the templates and font sizes, instead of choosing one from a list. That's what I'd really like. I'd love to hear from anyone who's tried it and what they think.
With the advent of online and on-demand publishers this market has really taken off and it is a great way to put your images in print. We just started teaching a unit about this very thing in all of our photo workshops, and include books made from five different publishers. There must be 100 of them out there now and some do allow you to start with a blank page and design everything from scratch. One way to do this if you don't have any page layout software is to simply design each page as a photo in photoshop (with fonts and any layout you want), then you can just upload the image and it will be the entire page. This market will continue to expand, and it is a great way for photographers to get a book "published" without really having to jump through all of the hoops that a real book takes. You won't ever be able to sell these books at bookstores, but for some it is plenty good enough...
Don't know why I didn't think about designing the page, as you suggested - great idea! Thanks for your info.
MPIX is a division of Millers that has MyPhotoBooks software that you can download and design a book. www.mpix.com. It has templates, but it also lets you start with a blank page, add and resize photos, add text and edit the font, edit the number of pages, etc. You can choose the size of your book and hard or soft cover. The soft cover lets you print the outside, too. It might be what you are looking for if you don't want to create each page individually in Photoshop. I have not ordered a book from them, but I have ordered prints and business cards. Their printing is usually very good. I have had an image here and there that I didn't like, but they happily re-printed them at no charge. I don't know if they would do that for books, though. I doubt it.
Thanks for letting us look at your book.javascript:%20x()
I used Blurb in the fall of 2006, before MyPublisher was available. I did a trip book, made two copies - one hardbound( ~$35), one soft (~$25). The quality was fine, but not great, as it was mostly a test. I wanted to see how easy it is to create such books and review the quality, with the idea of using these POD tools for creating some type of wedding albums. I'd do it again, and I'd look at the ease/quality of MyPublisher, too. I also checked out Exlibris and Asuka Books, but felt that the up-front costs (hundreds, thousands of dollars) were significantly more than what I wanted to pay for the quantity of books (hundreds) that I wanted.
Good luck,
Tim!
Thanks for all your input, I'll have to go check out MPIX and give it a try!
I'll try and follow up on the MPIX/Millers suggestion. I have had some printed through Millers and was very pleased with the results, especially after I started designing the pages myself in Photoshop as Tim E. and others have suggested.
There was only one image in the entire book that I was a little (very little) displeased with a color tint. But, the rest of the book was fine. Miller's even allows you to design a hard cover using images.
We only printed three copies of the book and donated one to an organization for their auction. My plan was to keep one for ourselves then sell the other one myself to hopefully help defray the printing costs. I was worried about the quality for that reason. But, the two we sold (one at the auction and one ourselves) each brought $400, so the quality is there....
Hope that helps.
Glenn
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0905/mh0905-1.html
This is on my list to try just haven't taken the time yet.
Thank you