Thursday, June 25, 2009

Quick Review of Some Photobook Sites

These are sites with tools to let you create a photobook or scrapbook digitally. They print and ship the books. The REALLY nice thing about doing it this way is you can make multiple copies. So for instance, you want to make a yearbook for your child's sports team. You can make a yearbook, buy a copy for yourself and another for the coach, and any other parents on the team can buy a copy if they want directly from the website. You don't have to collect their money or distribute the books. Some of these sites will even pay you a royalty.

They all have various strengths and weaknesses. Some sites are self-publishing sites for writers; others are photosharing sites. But all offer some way to get photos, text and at least some background art into a book form.

First, a straight list of the websites. This isn't yet a complete list. I ran out of time checking these out! So this post will have some follow-up posts.

Of these, I've used lulu.com extensively. I've used walgreens.com once (super easy). And I'm really excited about www.picaboo.com. I like the hand-made scrapbooky look-and-feel, and huge arsenal of creative tools they have. I plan to use them for my next book. I'll write about the experience.

OK here's the list. More info to come!

www.shutterfly.com
www.blurb.com
www.walgreens.com
www.mypublisher.com
www.picaboo.com
www.smilebooks.com
www.photobookexpress.com