Opinion - News Analysis   

Vanity publishing is now more attractive

If the invention of the printing press liberated books from the monopoly of the monasteries in the 15th century, self-publishing is freeing us today from the power of publishers. Only a tiny proportion of books written ever gets into the public domain because publishers are not prepared to take the risk. This is understandable to the extent that few books make money. However, things are changing thanks to a new generation of online publishers, such as Lulu.com, which enabl e you to publish a 100-page book complete with colour cover for as little as $7.20 — as long as you get everything right the first time.

The revolution is now spreading fast to full colour books as new companies spring up offering high-quality colour reproduction in hardback or paperback for affordable prices. According to a report from Understanding & Solutions, the Western European market for photobooks has exploded from under 250,000 in 2005 to nearly 7 million by the end of this year and an estimated 18 million by 2010. At one end of the scale a professional photographer wanting to publish a 350-page hardcover coffee table book of his or her work in “landscape” format measuring 13x11 inches can do so for around $160 a copy. But it is at the lower end of the market where the really interesting things are happening. A new genre of photobooks has sprung up which, apart from anything else, offers a fresh opportunity for unusual Christmas presents.

One of the most interesting recent arrivals is blurb.com, founded by Eileen Gittins barely a year ago. I have tried it in recent months and found it easy to use, except on one occasion when something happened and it kept crashing. If you use one of the standard formats and keep to the default layouts you can publish a book remarkably quickly. After downloading the software you can easily upload photos either from your desktop or from photo-hosting sites or blogs on the web. You write the title and author on the cover before dragging a photo you would like for the front. After choosing formats for the rest of the book (for example, colours and how many photos per page) you are ready to drag photos into the slots provided from your computer or let Blurb extract them automatically from iPhoto, Flickr or Picasa web albums. I automatically downloaded a series of snaps from my collection on Flickr. If I hadn’t been worried about editing them, the whole operation could have been completed in less than 20 minutes. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Behind the Kolkata violence
Too little, too late
The limits of the A.K. Antony line
Fighting back with comedy and satire
How to judge Annapolis’ success
Vanity publishing is now more attractive
Corrections and clarifications
Kolkata violence
Poignant photo
Latest excavation
Fighting TB “ is the responsibility of every citizen”: Marcos Espinal

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu