Category: Printing

This is the second post on my experiment comparing making a print-on-demand mini book with making a similar book by hand.
My first task was to reformat the original book and condense it a bit — it was 22 pages and needed to be 20. I’d read some comparisons of print-on-demand services, and Lulu, the service I’m trying, allows you to upload a PDF of the book pages, so you can use your own fonts and page layout software. All of the others require you to use their software and limited set of fonts to layout your book. I particularly wanted a full bleed and a book that opened flat, and the example photos of mini-books on Lulu’s website (picture above) indicated they would do that. So I laid out my book in InDesign and made a PDF….
Once I got to Lulu, though, I quickly discovered that my information was wrong — to make mini books (or any of Lulu’s “photo books”), you have to use their software (a flash program called Lulu Studio). So I went back to my PDF, read it into Photoshop and exported the pages as JPGs to import into Lulu Studio.
Uploading and arranging my JPGs into a book was easy. But the preview had me stumped. In one window, you see a large double-page spread you are working on while along the bottom there’s a scrolling window with small versions of the spreads. Here is the large double spread…

What is that dotted lined rectangle and gray area around my images — does that indicate the trim or something else? I made the JPGs over-sized (1/16″ larger on all sides than the book to ensure the pink bled off the left pages), so why didn’t the images fill the preview? The second smaller preview looked more like what I thought I should see (that’s it to the right).
I popped over to the Lulu forums to see if there was an answer (no). I’ve emailed Lulu support (but several days later I’ve not gotten a reply).
Annoyed, I hunted around to see if other print-on-demand sites made similar small books. I quickly discovered that iPhoto, the Mac program, also lets you make photo books — they have one that is roughly the same size as the Lulu mini book (3-1/2″ x 2-5/8″ and also 20 pages). So for the moment I’ve shelved Lulu and am off to make an iPhoto book….
One more small annoyance about Lulu’s layout program: you can reorder the pages, but the display is so small, it’s useless (see screen snap below). I ended up starting over when the pages were in the wrong order — I couldn’t figure out which pages to swap because I couldn’t read the type…

Several weeks ago, my friend Kate suggested that I try making a mini book (a 3.75″ x 2.5″ photo-book) on Lulu, the print on demand self-publishing site. At the time, I did a cursory look & thought the price ($3.99 for a 20 page book) might be cheaper than what I could make such a book for using the equipment in my studio (and probably much less aggravating). Printing photos or even color illustrations is always the biggest issue for me whenever I make a full-color book — the paper choices for my ink jet aren’t very nice (must be coated paper which doesn’t fold very well and the coating makes the paper too white for my taste, so it’s got to be covered completely with ink) and the ink is expensive. While I’ve made an uneasy peace with my ink jet, it can be very ornery — especially the times it sprays bits of black ink over parts of a page, rendering the output useless. So I’m always interested in new ways to print full color pages for my small editions (25-50 books).
Since Kate’s suggestion, I’ve framed a bit of an experiment. One of my first books was a very short story I wrote and illustrated about my first year of ballet class. The original version was 5″x7″ with thick Davey board covers, and a single pamphlet sewn signature. I used Mohawk Superfine Text, a nice cotton paper that isn’t coated but the results from printing my drawings and minimal text with the ink jet are tolerable. Recently someone in my ballet class reminded me of that book and asked to get a copy. I’ve had it on my never-ending to-do list to make a few and decided to use Lulu to print them (reformatted to the smaller 3.75″x2.5″ size). I’ll also make 2 by hand — one using coated paper and the other using Mohawk Superfine Text. I’ll compare the price to make each book as well as their look and feel.
That’s one of the spreads from the reformatted book, at the top of this post. I’ll report back in a few days about using Lulu.