Larry Colen wrote: >On a slightly less frivolous note, what is involved in putting together one of >these books once you have the photos? >The various tasks that need to be done. >The length of time to do each task. >Any cash up front to blurb to do one of these books. > >I assume that there's an economically optimal number of photos, probably >similar to the number of photos in the PDML annual. > >I also figure that the amount of time spent getting each photo ready for >publication will vary from person to person.
OK... You can find out a lot from the Blurb.com web site. They have their own free software called "Booksmart" for designing the book (page layout). It's a bit clunky but it works. You obviously need photoshop as well to edit and prep your images. I do my books in Adobe InDesign, which is obviously a much more powerful page layout application. From there you can output in PDF format or as JPEG files which can be dropped into the Blurb "Booksmart" app. I've been taking the latter approach as it lets me simply do a batch resize and Zip in order to generate the file I upload to the copyright.gov web site when I register my copyright. Blurb prints their books on an HP Indigo 5000. They do *not* use a color-managed workflow but they recommend putting your images into sRGB color space and not embedding the profile (embedding the profile doesn't do any harm, though). They provide an ICC profile of the Indigo 5000 for soft-proofing. I can get very close on the first try but I always have to adjust a few images to get things just the way I want them to look. So my workflow is: Get everything set and uploaded, order one book, make corrections, delete the first book, upload the revised book... and go. Blurb's pricing goes in 20-page increments, so a 21-page book costs the same as a 40-page book but a 41-page book costs considerably more. >I was clever enough this year to make a set of my best photos for each month, >to make it easier for me to pick three for this years annual. Yesterday, I >went through and and picked my candidates for the year so far, (in case you're >interested) >http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157625225151443/ > >There are a few people that might actually appreciate a collection of those >photos as a holiday gift. I could do them as a book, or for about the same >amount of money I could put together a smaller collection of 8x12s in some >sort of album. They each have their advantages. Depending on how simple or elaborate you want your page layouts to be, you can get a book done very quickly. Blurb seems to have suffered a downturn in volume along with the rest of the economy (two of the people I worked with there on promoting the 1st PDML book had been laid off by the time of the second book) but the advantage is their turnaround time is very quick now. I got my book in 9 days. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
