Buy my book!

There’s a new item on my sidebar: Buy My Book. Now you can, for under $30. It’s titled 365, an oh-so-clever play on the daily photo concept.

Back in early January I talked about how I printed and bound a one-off version of the Daily Photo from the previous year. I mentioned I was looking at making a Lulu published book. Well, I looked and I published. I ordered one to see how it looked, and, well, it’s OK. Not great, like from a real publisher, but not so bad.

Lulu is not newbie-friendly if you want to control the look of the project. The process was somewhat arduous, but would be less so if you were already fluent in creating PDF files. I tried various programs, and ended up using a trial version of Adobe Acrobat. I already had PSD files from the single copy, and I combined them into one half-a-gig PDF of the entire book. Apparently, if you want control over layout, that’s how it has to be done.

I gave the first copy to my father, Kenneth, to whom I dedicated the book. Because he was a photographer, I am a photographer.

Comments

[Mike C.]

For Lulu books I've been using a cheap but excellent DTP program called PagePlus which can produce PDF files. However (in the UK at any rate) the Lulu quality is way too variable between batches for my taste (from excellent to "argh!"), even from the same PDF file. Have you tried Blurb.com? You have to learn to get round the Blurb BookSmart software's attempts to control your layouts, but the print and binding quality is consistently excellent, imho. Shame about the high postage costs from the US to the UK ...

[Doug Plummer]

I looked at Blurb, but I could not figure out any way to not use their templates. The shipping costs even here are exorbitant (the book really costs $20), and I'm sure it's a big profit center for Lulu.

[Mike C.]

I think the main secrets with Blurb are (1) making use of the full range of page types and styles ("blank page", "chapter heading", etc.), (2) using "full bleed" pages to use whole page JPGs (again, the PagePlus DTP software comes into its own here), (3) realising images can be resized and positioned within any "box", and that (4) the "locks" on things like the title, page headers, etc., can be turned off. That said, it is annoying to have to grapple with this, BUT -- if you can get past the self-satisfied kidspeak of the "Blurberati" (!) -- you'll find that they take quality control VERY seriously -- instant response and recompense. Wait until you have to complain about poor quality to Lulu...

Congratulations on the book, btw. Interested to see you've made a download available -- I think I'll try this to see what happens!

[Mike C.]

Oops, looks like your time to complain may have arrived. I get this when I follow the link:

Error:
No pricing data found in default currency

Followed by what look like Javascript errors. Lots of luck ...

[Mike C.]

Good news: the purchase worked OK at home, for some reason, but not at work earlier (that'll teach me). However, having bought the thing I balked at a 500 Mb download ... Later!

[Bruce Nall]

I ordered your book - very nice. Initially, flipping to the back for captions was annoying but I finally realized that without adjacent captions, I was studying the images instead of reading captions.

It looks like on demand publishing may have arrived. I ordered your book within an hour of ordering David Halpern's "Pilgrim Eye" from Amazon. Both his traditionally published "off-the-shelf" book and your "print-on-demand" book arrived the same day!