Making your own book - even if only you will buy a copy

[fishmonger]

To help my kids remember their Muir Trail hike, I took the plunge and tried out the blurb.com one-off book printing service. Very impressed with it, and since there won't be any more sales than the handful the family will buy, the cost per copy is quite reasonable compared to the 100 book self-publishing options I read about a few years ago

http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/1047557" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Before I made and ordered this rather large and expensive book, I just searched among the thousands of books offered and bought a small book using the same paper and binding I had in mind of using to sample what these books are like. If you ever thought of making your own book, take a look at these people or similar services by http://www.lulu.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (blurb books can be larger, which appeals to photo users more).

There's something special about holding your own memories in hand bound in a hardcover book of substantial size and weight. No web gallery or shoe box of printed pictures comes close to the sense of gavity a big photobook conveys. I'm considering to go back into my archive and pull out a few good ones from thousands of old images and make a few more books.

[Hikin Mike]

Looks great!

I've done two books through Blurb. The first on called "Along the Road" is a 120 page. hard-cover book containing my favorite photographs. The other one is for my family as a Christmas present and contains snapshots from the past few years.

[maverick]

Hi Fish

I like the size 13x11 offered by Blurb as opposed to the smaller sizes offered by
other online companies like Mpix.
I am still looking for one that offers larger sizes at a reasonable price, but Blurb
so far is the front runner.

[Hikin Mike]

I went with the 8 x 10 books mainly because of price.

[The Other Tom]

Is this much different than books offered by photo hosting sites, like webshots, snapfish, etc ?

[fishmonger]

probably not much different - Flickr, Smugmug and a few others use blurb.com as their book printing option.

[The Other Tom]

Saw this article and it made me think of this thread...Thought you might be interested
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2 ... ries_N.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[fishmonger]

yeah, shutterfly is clearly not for somebody making a custom book - but they do know that those family layouts will sell really well, so they cover the push one button version of the market.

Other than Blurb, I have looked at WHCC, because they offer lay-flat binding, which is about the only thing I miss at Blurb

http://www.whcc.com/uploads/pdf/WHCC_20 ... 09_Web.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

but, with the fancier binding comes higher price. A 120 page book like the one I made would cost far more, even though they use the same HP Indigo printing system

120 page 12x12 with dust jacket would be $181 per book, twice the price! Plus, they can only do 100 pages with the layflat, so I went with Blurb and with careful planning of those two page spreads I used, I think I got around the gutter issue. If you don't mention it to anyone, they don't notice that the book isn't as cool as some lare scale mass produced coffee table books. It's the content that matters anyway :-)