Self-publishing books, thanks to the Internet and computer technology, has never been easier. If you have professional aspirations, self-publishing is a solid marketing tool.
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Blurb.com‘s BookSmart includes a number of standard book pages including Title, Introduction, Copyright, and Introduction so be sure to use them in to make your book look like a “real” book. At the beginning of the process you have a choice of using “Starter Layouts” that includes many of these pages and you will find that’s a better way to start rather than using the “Wing It” option that lets you work totally from scratch. Some of these pages, especially the Copyright page, include boilerplate text so be sure to read and customize it for you and your book. Other pages, such as Title have placeholders for text, such as the title and subtitle of your book. Choose these carefully because they will be added to the spine of the book as well as on the top and bottom of the inner pages. If the size of your monitor permits, try to use the side-by-side page layout that lets you see adjacent pages at one time. This is just one of the three views possible in BookSmart. You can, of course add, change, or delete any of this material at any step in the process because BookSmart is so flexible. Make no mistake, it’s not Quark XPress or Adobe InDesign but it’s much, much easier to learn and use than those desktop publishing programs. |
With your folder of JPEG images prepared, it’s just a matter of selecting what kind of page template you want to use and dragging your file onto the space in the template. This is where you’ll need to exercise taste and judgment to achieve a pleasing blend not only the image used but how many photos are used on a specific page. On the left-hand side of the working window, BookSmart has a scrolling window showing thumbnails of all the images in the book. After an image is placed a green check mark appears on it; if you delete the image from a page, the checkmark disappears. Once a photograph is placed in this dock it can be dragged onto a page and not from your image folder, which is an alternate way to place images. Joe Farace is the author of “How I Photograph Cars,” which is self-published via Blurb.com. Visit their website and search the Bookstore under “Farace” to order a copy. Softcover copies are $19.95 plus shipping.
