It’s been a few weeks since I posted about my book publishing project. Actually, my project has now expanded to numerous books. I am still in the editing phase on my New Jersey – The Underwater Garden State. Since I started, I did a portfolio book that I published using MyPublisher. I was incredibly pleased with the quality of the book. I had two made and gave one to my son, Tom, and his lovely wife, Lynda. The book is 80 pages long and is their Deluxe Hard Cover book. I used a photo on the front and back cover. The bad news is that the price of the book is over $200 with the shipping. Fortunately, MyPublisher was running a two for one sale so I was able to get two books for my $200. Once I received the books, I saw things that I should have done differently. They are things that should be thought out ahead of time.
The first thing that should be considered is the fold in the middle of the two pages. My green moray eel on the left is facing towards the inside of the book. Most people would not notice why there is a problem but it is because the moray’s mouth gets lost in the fold. It would have been very easy to flip the photo horizontally and have the eel facing in the other direction.
I flipped the green moray eel horizontally and then moved the text to the other side of the page. It makes it look much better. The eel doesn’t get lost in the fold.
In this photo, the octopus on the left gets lost in the center fold of the book. It actually looks better here than it does in the book.
I flipped the octopus horizontally and moved the text and it looks a lot better.
Here is another problem that I corrected although it may be more of personal preference.
I had the juvenile blue tang (bottom left) going in the opposite direction as the adult and I felt that it would look better with both fish going in the same direction so:
I like the flow much better with both fish going in the same direction.
Flipping photos isn’t always the answer with every photo. Take scuba divers for instance. You can’t flip their pages because their hoses would be on the wrong side of their body.
I flipped the photo horizontally. The text will also flip but I want you to see what happens to the diver’s breathing hose.
Scuba divers have their breathing hose coming over their right shoulder. If you are not a diver, you wouldn’t notice but if you are, you probably would and I wouldn’t want it to happen.
I also found that the layouts in MyPublisher was not as flexible as I wanted. For example, in the photo above, you could not group the three photos and get the text where it is. I decided to lay out the book in Adobe InDesign. The more I use the program, the happier I am with it. I could lay out a single page or multiple pages and then export them as high quality jpeg files which I would place into the MyPublisher book. This worked extremely well until I did an entire book in Adobe InDesign and I wanted to export all the pages (50) to jpeg files that I could place into a MyPublisher book. I googled to find if there was a program that might help and there was.
I found it at an Adobe InDesign Scripts page. It allowed me to output all the pages in my book as high resolution jpegs. I was able to number them using a prefix like “portfolio” with a number following it that increased sequentially. It worked very well. Once the pages were exported, I opened up MyPublisher and placed each page into the book. It went very fast.
It helped even more when MyPublisher came out with a great deal. They offered a Deluxe Hard Cover book with unlimited pages for $70.00 plus shipping and tax. I thought about my portfolio book. Here was a chance to reprint it with the changes that I made as well as with additional pages. Many of my relatives have been asking about a coffee table book of my underwater work so I was able to do both. I took my portfolio coffee table book, changed the name to “Ocean Adventures” and added photos until I reached 100 pages. I did all the work in Adobe InDesign and then used the page exporter utility to export each page as a full-sized jpeg. Here is a link to the finished book. Be patient when viewing. It is a big file and takes a little time to load. Anyone that might be interested in that book in future, please send me an email and I will put you on a list and email you when MyPublisher runs that same deal again. Without the deal, the book would have cost $227.00.
A few more tips on book layout and they pertain to two page spreads. The only way to do it in most self-publishing software is to layout the double page design in a photo editing program like Adobe Photoshop or a layout program like Adobe InDesign and save each half page as a high quality jpeg and insert each into a page in the book publishing software. This is all well and good but not all photos work well on two pages.
Here is an example of a photo that does not work although I did not realize it until I received my copy of the book. If there is something going on in the center of the page, it probably won’t work well for a two-page spread.
This photo definitely look better here than in the book.
Here are a few photos that work very well.
You can see more two-page spreads in my “Ocean Adventures” book. Well, my book publishing quest continues. I am still trying to find a publisher for my New Jersey – The Underwater Garden State. I hope that I find one. If not, I may seriously look into self-publishing the book. I have printed one hard copy so far and it looks really good. I now have a printed book from Blurb and a few from MyPublisher. I will talk about quality in another blog.
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