Lulu Book Publishing website - DPChallenge Forums

12/14/2005 07:53:24 AM · #1

Have you all seen www.Lulu.com?
From what I gather, they offer stupendously cheap full-bleed books with good quality CMYK printing... and look at the other photography groups that are producing books:
//books.lulu.com/content/117222
//books.lulu.com/content/167347
//books.lulu.com/content/119206
//books.lulu.com/content/125909
and that's only scratching the surface.
Come on guys, let's get our own book together, with ribbon winners from 2005... or maybe just the best of DPChallenge... or maybe the most popular photos of DPChallenge? What do you reckon?

12/14/2005 02:21:19 PM · #2

Bump... I can't believe nobody's interested in this.

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6

12/14/2005 02:22:20 PM · #3

I read about it in the Independent... the article's here: //news.independent.co.uk/media/article332627.ece

Message edited by author 2005-12-14 14:22:58.

kdkaboom

Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT

12/14/2005 02:41:04 PM · #4

Alot of poets I know have published thru them. It's really good quality printing, I've seen it first hand.

GeneralE

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

Canon 12x IS USM (S3 IS built-in Lens) -- 36-432mm (35mm EQ)

12/14/2005 02:45:03 PM · #5

What is "stupendously cheap" in real-world moolah? What's the minimum run?

aronya1

Nikon D70

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED

12/14/2005 02:52:23 PM · #6

From the website:

How much do hardcover books cost?
The binding fee is $15.00 and price per page is $0.02. If you purchase 10 or more copies of a single hardcover book, the binding fee drops to $12.00 per book plus $0.02 per page.

Looks like no minimum.

GeneralE

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

Canon 12x IS USM (S3 IS built-in Lens) -- 36-432mm (35mm EQ)

12/14/2005 02:58:41 PM · #7

At those prices they must be running on a "digital press" like an Indigo or a color laser -- they can't print offset in those small quantities. Two cents/page seems cheap even for regular copy-shop B&W copies ...

Prof_Fate

12/14/2005 03:04:35 PM · #8

I went and looked around. Looks to me to be similar to mypublisher and others but with a few oher options and more text oriented with text formats (softcover, comic, journal) as opposed to the square-ish album designs.

cost looks resaonable, even cheap, and i think you can print 1 or 1000, one for you or offer to sell the books (with a 'royalty' of your choosing) to anyone who happens along the site or a link.

What's that commercial on TV say - Publishing on Demand, now anyone can be published? This is it!

Feed your ego - write your own Guru of PS CS: How I would have won the gauntlet.

Lots of photographic books there - //www.lulu.com/content/140682
//www.lulu.com/content/110604
//www.lulu.com/content/120244

Hmmm, is everyone published now?

blazingmoonlight

Canon EOS-5D

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

12/14/2005 03:24:07 PM · #9

My husband is using lulu to print books of his comic, Planet 3(www.laughingjak.com). It's great because he can purchase them as the orders come in as opposed to investing a large amount of money upfront. The quality looked good (it was a paperback)...the only downside was that they were running behind in completing orders for the holidays. He had given them a deadline, but they didn't meet it. Pretty sure they refunded him back for that.

Konador

Canon EOS-500D Rebel T1i

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS

12/14/2005 03:36:13 PM · #10

This sounds like a great idea, and really cheap! I would be interested in taking part in a book like this for DPC, but I haven't won any ribbons in 2005 :(

kbhatia1967

Canon EOS-1100D

12/20/2005 02:07:43 AM · #11

Yes, I am interested.

librodo

Nikon D3s

Nikon AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR DG IF-ED

12/20/2005 04:45:28 AM · #12

I am "in" too, ifever, whenever. Jeff (and others) has written poems for some pics. How about compiling them into a book?

Manny

12/22/2005 08:06:49 AM · #13

I've noticed that another website (www.TrekEarth.com) I frequent is publishing a book at Lulu.
I really think we should have a go at this, and I'm willing to take on this project.
However, I'm stumped at the moment on how to democratically choose photos from people who are willing to have their photo(s) featured.
I'm a bit miffed that I'm not included in the TrekEarth project because I don't visit the forums very often... I want to avoid that here.
I think we should keep the prices to a minimum so that the book is cheap and nobody makes a profit.
So how should we do this?
The best of DPC? Start with the person who has the most ribbons and work down the list asking for one photo?
Or maybe choose the photos which are picked as the most popular favourites?
Or how about this year's ribbon winners? Or highest scoring photos?
I realise I have a vested interest here, so I am open to suggestions!
Perhaps it would be nice to publish photos which aren't ribbon winners... the first idea in the list would work here if we ask them for their favourite photo which isn't a ribbon winner.
Please let me know your thoughts.

Edit... or the profits could go to charity. MS is a popular charity to support here. Any thoughts?

Message edited by author 2005-12-22 08:08:14.

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

12/22/2005 09:16:25 AM · #14

Bump... do you all really not care, or can nobody be bothered to comment, or is it because this will only affect a few people?
SC... what do you think? Is it possible to have a poll to see if people are interested in this? If I'm going to put my time and effort into this, I'd like a little help from people!

moodville

Nikon D100

12/22/2005 09:20:52 AM · #15

If you use ribbon winners for 2005 then you're limiting the field and eliminating older pictures/photographers as well as newer photographers who havent gained ribbons but yet still have some wonderful images that could be contributed. You also then have to decide which of all those ribbon winning images would be marketable, because let's face it, some images may work for a challenge theme but arent exactly book-worthy.

The market is clearly people from DPC but if you pick images based on who is more likely to purchase the book then it becomes just another picture.com thing. It would be nice to have varied genres and if possible break down the images into those genres in the book. Which would suggest trying to get the best images in those particular genres.

You also have to take into account that some people may not have printable images for some of their images on DPC. Also that some people would be unwilling to 'donate' an image due to avoiding having certain images published that could affect future sales of that image in other venues or contest entries.

You could have people nominate photographers and approach them asking for one image. Although that becomes more of a popularity contest. You could take average scores and work down the list, but again, scores dont necessarily mean talent or lack thereof.

wewillexplore

Canon EOS-1D Mark II

12/22/2005 09:22:55 AM · #16

Bob, your title is far too obscure to get the average reader - look at the views in this thread - 216 right now. This thread is weeks old. Troy's website suggestion from yesterday has over 330. To me, that says the title isn't inspiring people to open it at all.

If you can get SC to change the title, try "DPC Book - Ribbon winners, top shots?" Something more than the lulu website - which probly none of us are immediately interested in.

"Publishing a DPC Book - yes?"
"DPC Book - want in?"
"DPC Ribbon Winners - in a book?"

Any of that will be much more descriptive of the real topic and will make people more likely to click (and I bet double the views in the next 24 hours)

eqsite

Nikon D7100

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED

12/22/2005 09:30:01 AM · #17

Originally posted by moodville:

You could have people nominate photographers and approach them asking for one image. Although that becomes more of a popularity contest. You could take average scores and work down the list, but again, scores dont necessarily mean talent or lack thereof.

If you did categories as you suggest, you could have people submit photos and then vote on them. The top X for each category would then go into the book. This could either be run as challenges or more informally like the guantlet stuff.

Bud

Canon EOS-550D Rebel T2i

Sigma 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM

12/22/2005 09:46:57 AM · #18

Bobster,

This is a great idea...

Here is how to possible get a breadth of involvement for people submitting photos:

Limit it to members
Limit it to those who have participated in 10 (or 15 or 20, however many you select) or more challenges in 2005
Establish a committee of 5 from DPC to help select photos & poems

Now this may help becuase if someone submits a crappy photo, it will not be selected. On the other hand, sometimes the 20th place submission in a challenge is a "better" photo than a ribbon winner the next week.

Just some thoughts...

Message edited by author 2005-12-22 09:55:33.

Skyarcher

Canon EOS-5D

Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L USM

12/22/2005 10:15:16 PM · #19

I happened upon this thread by way of looking for something else. :-P

Another thought for using Lulu... is to make calendars. I am list-owner of a camera group on Yahoo, and one of our members told us about this site. He had used it to set up a calendar and was selling them. Not cheap, but I purchased 3 of them to give to family members.

I liked that it was spiral bound, makes it lay flat nicely on the wall. I think the color could use a little bit more vibrancy, since I know what the original images looked like, but it's not bad. Someone not seeing originals would never know the difference.

I do like the idea of a book though.

-Christine

brizmama

Nikon D200

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 ED

12/22/2005 10:16:29 PM · #20

cool

docpjv

Fujifilm X-E1

Fujifilm XF 18-55mm f/2.8-4 OIS

12/22/2005 10:20:49 PM · #21

Do it! I am in for at least 5 copies... ;-)promise.

davidx76

Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT

Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

12/22/2005 10:28:58 PM · #22

Originally posted by aronya1:

The binding fee is $15.00 and price per page is $0.02. If you purchase 10 or more copies of a single hardcover book, the binding fee drops to $12.00 per book plus $0.02 per page.

2c/page is for b&w...which is fine, if you're only choosing b&w photos I suppose ;-). Colour is 15c/page.

Donating any profits to MS sounds good. A while back, there was a thread about a DPC-based charity...if thats still going, profits could be shared with them too(?).