I would like to describe my experience publishing a photo book.
I would like to describe my experience of publishing a photo book. I started thinking to this project some months ago when i wanted to do some more than showing my images . This idea came suddendly while i was viewing my last works . Then i began to plan how to do it , with a very fast web search i found that Blurb is the best choice for this kind of things . The plus was and it is that they offers, in addition to their printing service, an online selling service which is perfect if you want that your book reaches other people without building up a selling service in your web site .
Blurb provides you a software to manage all your images and package them in a book after choosing the type of book, the number of pages, the layout per page and everything about it. When you builded your book you can transfer it to their site and it's done!
I spent lots of my time to decide what layout fitted better, what colors and font worked better with my images.
I had to decide the order of the images, the right sequence according the subject and the main colors of the images.
I builded a little summary with the informations about the location of every image.
I wrote a brief introduction to the book and to my works.
In this book is also present an introduction written by an italian artist, a woman really talented in poetry and painting. Her name is Annino Cristina , you can give a look to her works here:
http:www.anninocristina.it
I thought that this would give to the book something more . Hope so .
But this is not enough, because if your book contains people's images or private houses images or churchs images then you have to ask the permissions to publish them.
So i started to examine my images and for the one who need a permission a write down a kind of declaration and i went to ask the owners if they would like to sign this declaration.
What can i say about this?
The private owners are quite happy that their houses are in a book, sometimes they ask a free copy :-) of the book but apart this it was simple to have their permissions.
When the church is owned by the "Church", it's simple yet you have to wait a little because the local priest have to ask to his upper.
If the building/church is owned by the Govern the matter become difficult.
Yes, they are not happy because you let know their building/church to more people as possible, maybe also abroad they want to know about your images all is possible . When you shooted, if the images are in bw or colors, if your book will be sold in italy or also abroad, how many printed copies ....and so on.
The best part is that according to these informations you have to pay to them a variable sum of money.
So i decided do not put in the book these kind of images (some of them are really nice) but it's too complicated and expensive and i didn't know some of the informations they wanted to know (number of printed copies, italy or abroad...).
When your book is on Blurb site and it is visible than i decided to carry it to some local touristic shops , located in the same area on which my images are based.
Hope this article can help you.
