It's been a great week for our first book Travel Photography with the local media going crazy over it! We've been featured in our local paper the Shropshire Star and on local news website Shropshire Live.

Heres the story from the Shropshire Star.

(Click to enlarge)

The Book featured on Shropshire Live:

Read full story on Shropshire Live.

Travel Photography is available in print (£12.95) or digital download (£5.95) from the ImAFish Shop!

After the publication of my book last week I've had a number of questions about how I went about getting it published. I'm using a print on demand service - therefore the book is only printed when ordered and no stock is held. This is great for smaller projects such as my Travel Photography book however the print cost per copy is higher as you cannot benefit from economies of scale. There are two major players in the print on demand market, Lulu and Blurb.

Lulu

Lulu offers a number of print on demand products including books, calendars, photo books and cook books. What Lulu provided over Blurb was a free ISBN number meaning that people could buy your book through shops such as Waterstones, WH Smiths and Amazon.

My problems with Lulu started when trying to upload my book. I had designed it using Apple's Pages application however Lulu did not support PDF's created this way (as far as I'm aware Lulu won't accept any PDF's created through Quartz based applications - even if the PDF is created through Adobe's Acrobat distiller, it is something to do with the way fonts are embedded into the PDF). I ended up uploading a 1.8 gig postscript file rather than a 300mb PDF to be able to print through Lulu.

When the proof arrived the print quality was poor, some parts were my fault for not adding images at a high enough resolution however ultimately it looked like it had been printed through an ink jet printer on the draft settings. Lulu do have another service just for photo book printing however this was a lot more expensive.

Blurb

I was originally recommended Blurb over Lulu because of the print quality issues however the extra options (such as an ISBN number) provided by Lulu were enough to convince me to try them first. Blurb have created their own book creation software called Book Smart however there was no easy way to import between Apple's Pages and Book Smart so I ended up recreating the book using this software. This was good in many ways as it solved many of the resolution/DPI issues I had with Lulu. Book Smart also handles all of the conversion/uploading when it comes to publishing the book.

Blurb like Lulu allows you to set your own price for selling a book however they offer no free ISBN number and no way to sell your book as an eBook. Annoyingly there is no way to print from Book Smart without Blurbs 'this is a proof copy' message all over the PDF. Therefore for the eBook version I sell on ImAFish I've had to go back to my original copy created in Apple's Pages.

Prices between Lulu and Blurb are very similar, my book costs almost the same between Lulu and Blurb (though the Blurb book is a couple of cm smaller). Both allow for sales in UK Pounds, Euros and US Dollars and ship worldwide.

If you are creating a text heavy book such as a novel then Lulu's extra features such as an ISBN number are a clear winner. If you are creating a portfolio or photography book then Blurb's superior print quality is much better however if you are like me stuck in the middle between creating a photo heavy based book targeted at a wide audience then its a simple decision between quality and audience - I chose quality.

www.blurb.com

www.lulu.com

Travel Photography - our great new book is now available as a digital download to read on your computer or eBook reader.

At the bargain price of £5.95 the PDF instant download is a great way to read the book.

Want to find out more about Travel Photography - then read the first 15 pages for free!

Buy now on the ImAFish Shop.

In May 2002 ImAFish setup our forum using the newly released PHPBB2. Seven years later and we decided it was time to for an update to the latest version of PHPBB. In this time there has been close to 40,000 posts spread across 2470 topics.

With the update we get some cool new features including atom feeds, global annoucements, sub forums, birthday alerts, user warnings and new moderating features.

Check it out at: www.imafish.co.uk/forum

Happy eighth Birthday ImAFish! On this date in 2001 the first ImAFish site went live, a lot has changed since then including hundreds of blog posts, thousands of comments and hundreds of thousands of visitors!

Highlights over the past year include:

Five Essentials for Online News Sites
New Website 12 Stix Launches
My £683.78 Phone Bill!
Gordon Ramsay DONE Image Generator
My Top 10 Drupal Modules
How to Look Cool on Facebook
Why I Moderate Comments
iPhoto 09 (version 8) Review - Faces
My Top 6 Trance Podcasts
Clever, Burger King, Very Clever
My Top 10 Drupal Modules

Many thanks to everyone who has contributed and read ImAFish over the past eight years!

In 2003 we launched the low cost PHP/MYSQL web hosting specialist Switchweb, six years later we've decided to relaunch Switchweb with a fantastic new design, more low cost hosting and two amazing new services.

1. Online Advertising - Switchweb has a growing network of sites including ImAFish, iPod History and 12Stix, all are excellent choices for buying text link adverts. Getting higher Google ranking and page rank is increasingly important for websites which is why advertising through independent agents such as Switchweb is ever relevant.
2. Website Design - Switchweb has partnered with Shrewsbury based The Web Orchard to provide high quality web sites, content management systems and E-Commerce sites. The Web Orchard have a proven track record in delivering to customers such as Aston Martin, Honda, the YMCA and Unison.

Switchweb is the home to hundreds of websites and with its 99% up-time guarantee is the perfect choice for your website.

Packages start from just £13 per year with a domain name and provide reliable PHP/MYSQL web hosting. A full comparison of features and package.

For more visit www.switchweb.co.uk to see what we can do for your website!