Bill-in-KY
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This might help some people who have been wondering about the subject, so I'm going to tell how it has been going with me.
I have many photos, most of which are nature type, "outdoors", hiking. Over 20 years ago I started my first website, so I could do something with some of my photos, and show other people places I went to out in the boonies, in the Somerset, Ky region. I had that site a few years, with my own domain, then dropped it, and soon after started a new one with another host, offering free hosting. I used a sub-domain then. I gradually increased the size, then in 2021 I deleted it. I had affiliate links on most pages, of that one, and on a RR website I also had. I had links for donations too. I didn't get a dime out of those websites, and finally deleted them. I didn't want to start paying for hosting, and they were getting bigger, so I dropped them. I don't think there was much traffic. I liked making the pages and showing photos, but I stopped all that.
In 2021 I started thinking about making an eBook. I suppose many people on here have wondered what to do with their photos, besides share them with friends and relatives. Websites are one way, and books are another. Sending photos to stock photo agencies is another, but that has its issues. In a previous post recently, in the Digital Minolta section, I mentioned a bit about that. I looked into it a couple years ago. Back in the 1980s I thought about those agencies and read about it where I could. I'm not sure when, but I read a book by Ron Enge, about selling photos, "Sell And Resell Your Photos". I think that was the title. My area of camera use was the outdoors. He said the market for that was saturated. In the early '80s one agency wanted 500 of a photographer's best photos. I didn't have that many in total, let alone "best". I didn't get anywhere with that. A couple years ago I sent some test photos to one agency to see if they would pass their test. I didn't have a DSLR, and they require that. Mine failed, even some made with a 14 mpx P&S. Seems to me the agencies I looked at, online, wanted DSLR photos. Another thing is the prevalence now days of very cheap pay for photo use. The world is saturated, I suppose, with photos, and it is a buyer's market, I think. Some agencies pay decently, as far as I know, but there are some that offer little pay. I didn't want to get into that racket. Buyer's market. I suppose there are plenty of pros who make a living from their photo rentals. Getting to that level takes some doing, somehow. Meanwhile, there are thousands of camera afficionados who would probably like to put some photos to use and make some money out of that. Besides submitting to periodicals, which is another rat race I think, and book publishers who rent photos, people can try making their own books. There are self publishing outlets for that. A person makes a book using apps and uploads it to a publisher, who can sell it on his own website, and distribute it to other retailers if suitable and desired. There is a lot of info online about all this. No doubt there are many people on DP-Review who know all this stuff, but there could be many wondering about it. Last night I read comments about different aspects, mainly about apps to use. Right now, I just want to discuss my experience with this.
By the way, In years past, submitting photos to a magazine required mailing them and then waiting months for results. A publisher might hold photos for six months and then say he can't use them. I've had that. Submit and wait. Email now days, or upload I suppose. Still have to wait. Lots of lead time. A photographer would have to juggle submissions to various publishers. Another thing I found with stock photo agencies, a couple years ago, is that they, or some of them, want signed releases for about everything, even unrecognizable people. Nuts.
In 2021 I thought about making an eBook through Kindle. As it turned out, I couldn't go with them. They require a code number to be texted to the client in order to sign in to Kindle. I don't text, am not set up for texting with my flip phone, so I didn't get anywhere with Kindle. Amazon owns Kindle. I had trouble with them too, although I have an account and bought $50 worth, from a gift card. For a book to have a lot of photos or other illustrations, it has to be in PDF format. Kindle accepts manuscripts in PDF. I went round and round with them about that sign-in code and finally gave up and looked for another publisher who accepts PDF.
As far as I know, most publishers want "flowable text", for eBooks. That is because it would work on different devices, of different sizes and types. They want to accommodate readers who can, and want to, change the font of a publication on their device. Another thing to consider. Why is that necessary? Seems nuts to me. Why can't they read in whatever font the publication comes in. Device size and shape can affect the layout of a downloaded publication, so the publishers want this flowable text.
A book with many photos cannot be in "flowable" form. It has to be rigid, so as not to get shifted, get text and photos and headers shifted out of place. It can get all messed up with shifting. This is for eBooks. Print books are fixed, of course. Submissions for print books have to be in PDF. My first inclination was to make an eBook. It is simpler, without book dimensions, "bleed", gutter, and all that to consider. I needed a publisher who would accept an eBook in PDF format. Kindle was out, so I looked and found Lulu, "Lulu Publishing". They accept eBooks in PDF format.
What to use to make an eBook, that was the question. I have an old version of Microsoft Word, 2000 issue. I tried that and it had trouble. I gave up on that and tried Ableword. It seemed to be ok, but I had a problem and then looked for another one, and settled on Apache Open Office. It can save a document in PDF format. I made four eBooks and listed them in the Lulu bookstore. They are not there now. I "retired" them. I'm going to turn them into print books. Ebooks are simpler to do, but they can be copied. That was a chance I took. After I made a print book, two of the same actually, one revised, I took down the eBooks.
Now for some print book critical stuff. There is plenty of info on the Lulu.com website about making both kinds of books, and about sizes and all the rest. There is plenty of info on the internet about making books. Lulu has a big department of info on all this. They even have a cover tool for making covers. That's another thing to do.
An author can choose Premium color ink or Standard ink. Premium costs three times as much. I wanted to keep the cost down, so I chose Standard, but with the 80# paper, instead of 60#. I used Open Office to make the first print book, which is over 150 pages. Almost every page has one or two photos. There is a lot of photo work just in getting ready to put a book together--my books anyway. I collected photos I wanted, then changed the resolution to the required 300 ppi, and resized them to fit the pages. I had trouble with page numbers in Open Office. I went round and round with that, and finally got it right. I had to have several pages of matter before the actual book started.
One mistake I made was to set my photos like I normally do, to make them look as right as I can. If using Premium ink, that is ok, but not for standard ink. The standard ink process, a wet process, I was told, makes the photos darker. After it was all done, I ordered a copy to look at. My photos were darker, many were too dark, recognizable, but dark. Some looked ok. Another mistake was that I sized photos in pixels. It should have been in inches, or millimeters. Inches is better for me, and that is what I used afterward. Sizing the photos in pixels, they came out a little bigger in the book than they should have. I used a 12 point font and that was a mistake too. Text looks a little big in the book, not much, but bigger than normal. I printed a page from the manuscript on my own printer, and the photos came out bigger than they were supposed to. Text looked a bit big too. I have to use inches for photos, and 11 point font.
Something went wrong in printing, the trimming, and things were skewed a bit, so Lulu said they would send a replacement book, and offered to let me get Premium printing. I chose that, to see how it would look. The pages look fine, the photos look fine.
After that, I wanted to make a revised version of that same book, but with changes. I had to go through all the photos again, rounding up the originals, and changing the resolution, and then sizing them in inches. I changed the font to 11 points, hoping that would look ok (it does). I changed a few photos, re-made the book and uploaded it. One thing to note is that the photos have to be original, or in fairly big size in order to get them set right for a book. I couldn't use reduced versions. I have one group in which I deleted my originals and kept only reduced ones, to save space on storage media. I have other reduced ones, but not originals. I keep my photos on flash drives. I don't trust computers. They can go bad at any time. I had one flash drive go bad, and had some corrupted photos. Actually, two. One was new and just started. Anyway, it is necessary to have a good size photo to start with. Those from a 5 mpx camera are fine, big enough. Maybe those from a 4 mpx camera might work. I don't know. 5 mpx is ok to use. Many of mine are from 5 mpx Kodaks. Anything bigger is fine of course.
I re-did that book, with photos sized in inches, and made lighter than normal, so that when darkened a little by the printing process, they would come out about right. Used 11 font.
For the revision, I switched to Scribus. It was new to me. Another element to all this is color management. There is no place, that I know of, in Apache Open Office to set color management. Scribus does have it, but not in those words. There is a place to check if the manuscript is going to be used on screen or to be printed. I was advised that a manuscript with color photos ought to be in CMYK form, not RBG. Scribus has a way to do that, just check it for printing.
I ordered another copy to look at, to see if it is ok, before proceeding with any more books. It is. The photos came out ok . This is with "Standard" ink. Making photos lighter than normal, and checking the box in Scribus for "printing", made it work out ok. Now, I am in the process of converting my eBooks into print books, starting with the first one. It is time consuming, and takes much computer work. Getting all the photos ready is the bulk of it. Some of mine are film photos, and I have to re-scan some. That is time consuming. I have an old computer and an old scanner that I use for that. Mostly, I'm using digital photos. It's a lot of work, but something I want to do. I haven't sold anything yet, but I'm doing it anyway. One thing that helps is that I have my website on flash drives (copies), and I can use a web page and reproduce it into book form, with whatever changes I want or need to make.
This is long, but it might help a few people who have been thinking about diving into all this, to get some of their photos in a book and show and tell about their adventures.
I have many photos, most of which are nature type, "outdoors", hiking. Over 20 years ago I started my first website, so I could do something with some of my photos, and show other people places I went to out in the boonies, in the Somerset, Ky region. I had that site a few years, with my own domain, then dropped it, and soon after started a new one with another host, offering free hosting. I used a sub-domain then. I gradually increased the size, then in 2021 I deleted it. I had affiliate links on most pages, of that one, and on a RR website I also had. I had links for donations too. I didn't get a dime out of those websites, and finally deleted them. I didn't want to start paying for hosting, and they were getting bigger, so I dropped them. I don't think there was much traffic. I liked making the pages and showing photos, but I stopped all that.
In 2021 I started thinking about making an eBook. I suppose many people on here have wondered what to do with their photos, besides share them with friends and relatives. Websites are one way, and books are another. Sending photos to stock photo agencies is another, but that has its issues. In a previous post recently, in the Digital Minolta section, I mentioned a bit about that. I looked into it a couple years ago. Back in the 1980s I thought about those agencies and read about it where I could. I'm not sure when, but I read a book by Ron Enge, about selling photos, "Sell And Resell Your Photos". I think that was the title. My area of camera use was the outdoors. He said the market for that was saturated. In the early '80s one agency wanted 500 of a photographer's best photos. I didn't have that many in total, let alone "best". I didn't get anywhere with that. A couple years ago I sent some test photos to one agency to see if they would pass their test. I didn't have a DSLR, and they require that. Mine failed, even some made with a 14 mpx P&S. Seems to me the agencies I looked at, online, wanted DSLR photos. Another thing is the prevalence now days of very cheap pay for photo use. The world is saturated, I suppose, with photos, and it is a buyer's market, I think. Some agencies pay decently, as far as I know, but there are some that offer little pay. I didn't want to get into that racket. Buyer's market. I suppose there are plenty of pros who make a living from their photo rentals. Getting to that level takes some doing, somehow. Meanwhile, there are thousands of camera afficionados who would probably like to put some photos to use and make some money out of that. Besides submitting to periodicals, which is another rat race I think, and book publishers who rent photos, people can try making their own books. There are self publishing outlets for that. A person makes a book using apps and uploads it to a publisher, who can sell it on his own website, and distribute it to other retailers if suitable and desired. There is a lot of info online about all this. No doubt there are many people on DP-Review who know all this stuff, but there could be many wondering about it. Last night I read comments about different aspects, mainly about apps to use. Right now, I just want to discuss my experience with this.
By the way, In years past, submitting photos to a magazine required mailing them and then waiting months for results. A publisher might hold photos for six months and then say he can't use them. I've had that. Submit and wait. Email now days, or upload I suppose. Still have to wait. Lots of lead time. A photographer would have to juggle submissions to various publishers. Another thing I found with stock photo agencies, a couple years ago, is that they, or some of them, want signed releases for about everything, even unrecognizable people. Nuts.
In 2021 I thought about making an eBook through Kindle. As it turned out, I couldn't go with them. They require a code number to be texted to the client in order to sign in to Kindle. I don't text, am not set up for texting with my flip phone, so I didn't get anywhere with Kindle. Amazon owns Kindle. I had trouble with them too, although I have an account and bought $50 worth, from a gift card. For a book to have a lot of photos or other illustrations, it has to be in PDF format. Kindle accepts manuscripts in PDF. I went round and round with them about that sign-in code and finally gave up and looked for another publisher who accepts PDF.
As far as I know, most publishers want "flowable text", for eBooks. That is because it would work on different devices, of different sizes and types. They want to accommodate readers who can, and want to, change the font of a publication on their device. Another thing to consider. Why is that necessary? Seems nuts to me. Why can't they read in whatever font the publication comes in. Device size and shape can affect the layout of a downloaded publication, so the publishers want this flowable text.
A book with many photos cannot be in "flowable" form. It has to be rigid, so as not to get shifted, get text and photos and headers shifted out of place. It can get all messed up with shifting. This is for eBooks. Print books are fixed, of course. Submissions for print books have to be in PDF. My first inclination was to make an eBook. It is simpler, without book dimensions, "bleed", gutter, and all that to consider. I needed a publisher who would accept an eBook in PDF format. Kindle was out, so I looked and found Lulu, "Lulu Publishing". They accept eBooks in PDF format.
What to use to make an eBook, that was the question. I have an old version of Microsoft Word, 2000 issue. I tried that and it had trouble. I gave up on that and tried Ableword. It seemed to be ok, but I had a problem and then looked for another one, and settled on Apache Open Office. It can save a document in PDF format. I made four eBooks and listed them in the Lulu bookstore. They are not there now. I "retired" them. I'm going to turn them into print books. Ebooks are simpler to do, but they can be copied. That was a chance I took. After I made a print book, two of the same actually, one revised, I took down the eBooks.
Now for some print book critical stuff. There is plenty of info on the Lulu.com website about making both kinds of books, and about sizes and all the rest. There is plenty of info on the internet about making books. Lulu has a big department of info on all this. They even have a cover tool for making covers. That's another thing to do.
An author can choose Premium color ink or Standard ink. Premium costs three times as much. I wanted to keep the cost down, so I chose Standard, but with the 80# paper, instead of 60#. I used Open Office to make the first print book, which is over 150 pages. Almost every page has one or two photos. There is a lot of photo work just in getting ready to put a book together--my books anyway. I collected photos I wanted, then changed the resolution to the required 300 ppi, and resized them to fit the pages. I had trouble with page numbers in Open Office. I went round and round with that, and finally got it right. I had to have several pages of matter before the actual book started.
One mistake I made was to set my photos like I normally do, to make them look as right as I can. If using Premium ink, that is ok, but not for standard ink. The standard ink process, a wet process, I was told, makes the photos darker. After it was all done, I ordered a copy to look at. My photos were darker, many were too dark, recognizable, but dark. Some looked ok. Another mistake was that I sized photos in pixels. It should have been in inches, or millimeters. Inches is better for me, and that is what I used afterward. Sizing the photos in pixels, they came out a little bigger in the book than they should have. I used a 12 point font and that was a mistake too. Text looks a little big in the book, not much, but bigger than normal. I printed a page from the manuscript on my own printer, and the photos came out bigger than they were supposed to. Text looked a bit big too. I have to use inches for photos, and 11 point font.
Something went wrong in printing, the trimming, and things were skewed a bit, so Lulu said they would send a replacement book, and offered to let me get Premium printing. I chose that, to see how it would look. The pages look fine, the photos look fine.
After that, I wanted to make a revised version of that same book, but with changes. I had to go through all the photos again, rounding up the originals, and changing the resolution, and then sizing them in inches. I changed the font to 11 points, hoping that would look ok (it does). I changed a few photos, re-made the book and uploaded it. One thing to note is that the photos have to be original, or in fairly big size in order to get them set right for a book. I couldn't use reduced versions. I have one group in which I deleted my originals and kept only reduced ones, to save space on storage media. I have other reduced ones, but not originals. I keep my photos on flash drives. I don't trust computers. They can go bad at any time. I had one flash drive go bad, and had some corrupted photos. Actually, two. One was new and just started. Anyway, it is necessary to have a good size photo to start with. Those from a 5 mpx camera are fine, big enough. Maybe those from a 4 mpx camera might work. I don't know. 5 mpx is ok to use. Many of mine are from 5 mpx Kodaks. Anything bigger is fine of course.
I re-did that book, with photos sized in inches, and made lighter than normal, so that when darkened a little by the printing process, they would come out about right. Used 11 font.
For the revision, I switched to Scribus. It was new to me. Another element to all this is color management. There is no place, that I know of, in Apache Open Office to set color management. Scribus does have it, but not in those words. There is a place to check if the manuscript is going to be used on screen or to be printed. I was advised that a manuscript with color photos ought to be in CMYK form, not RBG. Scribus has a way to do that, just check it for printing.
I ordered another copy to look at, to see if it is ok, before proceeding with any more books. It is. The photos came out ok . This is with "Standard" ink. Making photos lighter than normal, and checking the box in Scribus for "printing", made it work out ok. Now, I am in the process of converting my eBooks into print books, starting with the first one. It is time consuming, and takes much computer work. Getting all the photos ready is the bulk of it. Some of mine are film photos, and I have to re-scan some. That is time consuming. I have an old computer and an old scanner that I use for that. Mostly, I'm using digital photos. It's a lot of work, but something I want to do. I haven't sold anything yet, but I'm doing it anyway. One thing that helps is that I have my website on flash drives (copies), and I can use a web page and reproduce it into book form, with whatever changes I want or need to make.
This is long, but it might help a few people who have been thinking about diving into all this, to get some of their photos in a book and show and tell about their adventures.
