Another Blurb Book

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No, not mine this time. I've made several print-on-demand books using the Blurb service and blogged about it here. About this time the past two years, I've been busily finishing my entry to Blurb's annual photo book contest but decided to stay away this year (not that it would matter). Instead, I'm working on a book for the Louisiana Photographic Society.

I've been a member of the Louisiana Photographic Society for several years now. Our club is very active and it seemed a good idea to make a brag book. Blurb offers many book sizes and formats. The best size book for this project seems to be the 8x10 inch landscape format. An 80 page book would cost about $30 in soft cover or $45 in hard cover. This price includes a quantity discount and shipping based on an initial order of at least ten copies. That price does not include any profit for LPS. After the initial order, the book can be made public and additional copies ordered directly from Blurb.

In our 80 page book, 6 pages will be used for title, introduction, LPS history and LPS group scenes. This leaves 74 pages for LPS member photographs. Each participating LPS member will be allowed at least 2 pictures so up to 37 LPS members can participate. The acceptance criteria is simply “First offered, first accepted.” We have about 100 members and I'd consider a 37% participation rate to be very good.

Although the Blurb quality is pretty good, there are sometimes complaints about black and white photos so our book will have only color photos. Even though the format is called “8x10”, the landscape photos are really 7.6x5.3 inches (actually 2271 x 1588 pixels); portraits are 5x6 inches (actually 1500 x 1796 pixels). The book design is very simple: Each photo will have only a caption and photographers name.

In addition to the picture size and resolution, all photos must be in the sRGB color profile in order to have some hope of reasonable color management. I've asked that files be submitted without final print sharpening so that I can add print sharpening consistently.

This is meant to be a fun project and not a fund raiser although everyone participating must purchase a copy of the book. We'll make the book public but don't expect to sell many (any?). As the project progresses, I'll post updates and links for a preview.
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