Publishing e-books using ISSUU

In my last post, I talked about the pleasure of printing and giving (or selling) photo books. After doing a little more investigation, I discovered a really great site for publishing books and magazines online called issuu.

The premise is simple. If you can create a PDF file, you can upload it to Issuu. The site turns the PDF into a flash application simulating a real book or magazine, complete with animation of page turns etc. The best part of this is the capability of exporting the flash file to other websites.

I decided to give this a whirl. But first I had to figure out how to create a PDF file. There are many tools for this, like Adobe Indesign and Microsoft Publisher, but I wanted something cheap or, even better, free. Imagine my delight when I found Scribus! This is a really nice, fully-featured desktop publishing package that allows you to create photo albums (or any other document for that matter) with high quality fonts and full resolution graphics. The interface is very nice (quite intuitive if you're used to Windows or MacOS) and runs on all Microsoft operating systems, including Vista. Scribus also exports to PDF.

So, I created a small photo album using my photos of the Charleboix region of Quebec, uploaded the PDF file to issuu and copied the html fragment into this blog so you can see the little flash application.

Voila...

You can either leaf through the album in miniature by pressing the back and forward buttons or you can click on the album and launch the complete player in its own window.

On Publishing Photo Books

Many aspiring photographers face the question of how they should distribute their work. Publishing photos online is fast and fun and can initiate contact with other photographers and even generate fans for your work. I've used flickr.com and pbase.com and enjoy cruising these sites looking for photographer discoveries. However, there are limitations to online distribution. It's a highly competitive world out there with millions of photographers clamouring for attention. The medium isn't as satisfying as paper because the images are so small and you have no control over the set-up of the viewer's monitor. Who knows what your photos really look like out there. Finally, there is really no way to make any money from online images.

One of the alternatives is to produce prints. For me, there is nothing more satisfying than producing a large print of one of my images. It's a highly tactile experience and a whole evening can easily go by in the process of editing an image, producing drafts and finally a final print. However, large prints are expensive to produce, need to be matted and framed and then you have to find a willing victim (or customer) for your work who has wall space to hang the thing. My lovely spouse likes my work, but doesn't want to turn over all the wall space in the house to it and I don't have access to a gallery to market my prints.

Recently, I've discovered a very nice medium that is a bit of a compromise between online images and large prints. It allows you to produce a series of photographs like an online gallery but have them printed out on paper where they can be admired, touched and passed around. I'm talking about photo books, a very compelling medium for displaying images.

Photo books have many advantages. With new technologies, they can be produced inexpensively in small quantities, so they are ideal for selling at art fairs and giving away as gifts to your friends. They don't demand framing and wall space, so they can be enjoyed by the rich and poor alike. There are lots of types of books to choose from, so you can exert control over the type of paper and printing process to get the quality that you desire. Some book publishers also allow you to sell books online, a good potential way of monetizing your images.

I like photo books because of all the artistic possibilities. Think of all the stories that can be told using just your images or by combining text and images.

Here are some options for producing books:

• If you have a good inkjet printer and want total control over the final product, you can purchase a book kit from Hahnemuhle or Innova. For your money, you get a 20 page, double-sided book with cotton fibre paper. The Innova album is cheaper ($40 versus $80), but the Hahnemuhle album is slightly larger and comes with nice light plastic pages to insert between each photo page. Using these products is excellent if you want one very nice album, perhaps as a gift. If you want to scale to several albums or want to sell your album online (or allow your friends to order extras), this is not the best bet.
  
• The next option is to use a photo printer that does albums in low volumes. Typically, this will be a store that owns a high-end Epson printer and can provide you with templates to create and upload albums to their web-site. A good example of this type of service is offered by the Pikto Gallery. I haven't used the service yet, but I've done large prints at Pikto and they provide excellent service. I've no doubt that their fine art print albums will be of high quality. Pricing runs from $55 for a 30 page 6"x8" soft cover album to $200 for a 12"x18" hard-cover album. Pikto gives you custom software that you can download to assemble your album and they can help you calibrate color and ensure that you'll be pleased with the results. The beauty of this approach is you can produce additional albums with very little effort. For another $200, they will set up a custom online store where you can sell your photo albums. The albums can be printed on a variety of art papers using archival inkjet inks.
  
• If you want to produce photo books that look like real printed books (i.e. using a printing press), then there are several sites that do this too. Here are two of them: lulu.com and blurb.com. Pricing ranges from as low as $12.95 for a small 7"x7" 20 page soft-cover to $160 for a 360 page (!) hardcover book at 13"x11". These are in quantity one. The advantage of this option is the price and the ability to scale up to large books and large quantities. The disadvantage is in the quality. These are not customized art books, but they do have the look and feel of real art books. If you want to self-publish in limited quantities, this might be the route for you.

If the idea of a photo book grabs you, you should know about SoFoBoMo (Solo Foto Book of the Month) and Paul Butzi. If you sign up at the blog site, you have until May 31st to produce a book (either printed or just PDF) and submit it. The book has to have at least 35 photos and they all have to be taken between April 1st and May 31st this year. Get Crackin'!

Photog Discovery of the Week

This is a special month in Toronto. The Contact photo festival runs throughout the month of May and many galleries are exhibiting some wonderful images. In addition, several public spaces, including Pearson Airport, the concrete supports of the Gardiner Expressway and the Brookfield (formerly BCE) Place are featuring photo art.

I was wandering down Queen Street West on the look-out for photo exhibits when I discovered a new gallery, The Lausberg Contemporary, showing works by David Burdeny. The show is called Horizons and it consists of stunning, stark landscapes largely from Greenland and Antarctica. The works are mainly panoramas, but the quality of light is absolutely eerie. There is an amazing sense of stillness and grandeur about these works that I've not seen before in images of the Antarctic (a destination that has become a bit of a fad lately).



According to the exhibit blurb, David Burdeny has used long and repeated exposures to achieve the effects he displays in his images. No matter how he does it, the compositions are superb and the mood that he conveys is bittersweet, with beauty and peace overlaid with brooding and foreboding. The small thumbnail doesn't quite do justice to these large works, but you can sort of get an idea of the quality of these images.

If you are in the Toronto area, I would encourage you to get out this month and soak up the Contact exhibits.