It is getting easier to get published…

I recently decided that I wanted to start putting together some of the photograph collections I have been taking in a book form that I can hand to various members of my family to keep as a coffee table book or something to come back to when relaxing on a cold winter night. Sitting by the fire, having a glass of wine and reminiscing about friends and family can be a wonderful thing to do when you have a few spare moments to relax.

Anyway, I started looking at different sources that are available on the web to first create our Christmas Cards this year and then going to the next step and creating my first book. I looked at my SmugMug account for the cards, and wasn’t real impressed with the formats that they offered so I kept searching until I settled on Shutterfly.  Not only was there a wide selection of formats to pick from but their site contained all the necessary tools to submit and share the project. One thing that I would have preferred would have been the ability to save a pdf document locally that I could have printed a test print to make sure of what I had put together. Seeing it on the screen was okay, but I like seeing it on paper as well. The initial card took me about twenty minutes to put together and then the next two were real easy to setup because I already had the format set to what I wanted.

I submitted my projects to them as an order on Sunday and the cards arrived at our house on Tuesday. I couldn’t believe how fast they turned it around. Next came the first book that I put together and it took me two days picking the pictures that I wanted, writing the descriptions and then pulling the trigger to get them ordered. I started with the larger 8x11 format and then was able to quickly downsize it to a 7x9 format with just a few clicks. They were running a really good sale price on the 7x9 format which is what I am going to give out to most of the family.

Now I figured this process was going to take a couple of weeks to put together but I had the books in my hands three days after I ordered. The construction was wonderful and although I would have liked to have spent a little less the price really wasn’t unreasonable.

I have already started my 2010 publication and it won’t take long to push out once we get past Christmas this year. I can hardly wait to get it finished and handed out.