What's the bestest way to self-publish?

December 11, 2006 11:53 AM

Has anyone used blurb.com? More to the point, what are my options for self-publishing?

I am enamoured of the idea of putting together a hardcover of wedding pictures -- Blurb looks okay, if a bit hard to customise (and the shipping costs to Canada are too steep.) Any other ways to get a hard or softcover, perfect bound 40-60 page book with a very small print run?

posted by docgonzo to media & arts (6 comments total)

Kevin Kelly compared Blurb & Lulu last week in Cool Tools.
posted by djb at 11:56 AM on December 11, 2006

MetaFilter thread on djb's link.

How to print a book on Ask MetaFilter.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:58 AM on December 11, 2006

Ah. Thanks. Good links there -- I missed the Kelly post. Oops.
posted by docgonzo at 12:09 PM on December 11, 2006

I just finished using Blurb - hard to customize compared to typesetting it yourself in Indesign, sure, but there are dozens of page templates and you can alter them a bit, even. The built in themes are decent and you can add photo edges too. I haven't seen my final product yet - a 368 page hard bound book with dust cover! - but I'll let you know how it looks when I get it.

Interestingly, since the Blurb software generates postscript on your end prior to uploading it, you can use your own fonts, and not just the core fonts that they'd have on their RIP. That's a nice addition; a lot of other similar tools (shutterfly, iphoto) don't allow that.
posted by luriete at 12:13 PM on December 11, 2006

I do this all the time (as my side business but haven't used Blurb yet. (I like Shutterfly, and I used to like Imagestation. I hate MyPublisher.)

One option (that I use) is to create the pages in Photoshop and then use the full-bleed layout in the photo website templates.
posted by pyjammy at 1:13 PM on December 11, 2006

oops, left off a ) up there... (after business).
posted by pyjammy at 1:14 PM on December 11, 2006