After today you can buy a hardbound copy of my second photo book! Contact me now if for your own copy of The Surprisingly Artistic Potholes of Port Townsend Vol II. The initial copy of Volume II from VistaPrint looks good, and five copies for resale arrive today.

UPDATE:

I have just donated & delivered a copy of each volume of the The Surprisingly Artistic Potholes of Port Townsend to the Jefferson County Historical Museum! The JCHS Museum has a small art collection and displays art exhibits by local artists in addition to historic artifacts and information of local interest. I was quite pleased to have this donation welcomed into the collection. I don’t know how anyone finds out about books in their collection, but I assume these can be viewed on request. And perhaps will even be on display at some point if the time is deemed right…

And I have four copies of Volume I of The Surprisingly Artistic Potholes of Port Townsend available, so perhaps you would enjoy having the set?

How this self-publishing thing works with Vista Print

I assemble a collection of images in a designated folder for the VistaPrint desktop application. In the application I can then build my photo book, choosing photos from this folder. I can resize the photos, add text, design the cover, and choose colors for backgrounds. The application provides easy ways to choose colors from a palette or to set custom colors. While this is mostly WYSIWYG, some issues are not clearly shown but there are warnings when images or text stray beyond margins, etc. so may not print fully.

There is a base number of pages for book size & style, then additional pages add cost. If you want blank left pages, you will pay a lot more, as blank pages cost the same as printed pages. So I try to find photos that work well together.

After I have a first draft on all pages, I preview the book in the application, viewing two pages at time. Here you can more readily see how it will look. I check that text boxes & images line up and balance well across the two pages that will be viewed together. This becomes a review & correct cycle. It is fairly easy to move pages around, and of course to insert or add pages. Do use the warnings button when reviewing after every change you make. It all too easy to accidentally move full page images off center!

Once everything is satisfactory, the application will upload your book to the VistaPrint website so you can order your book. Purchase five to get a small discount, or more for a bit better discount. Photo books are a bit pricey: you can pay a lot for really great quality paper and binding. But VistaPrint seems to be the best budget option, with quite nice quality. There can be problems, and the “glossy” paper option I chose for Volume II is more of a satin sheen than a photo glossy. But The Surprisingly Artistic Potholes of Port Townsend Vol II looks pretty good in my judgement.