You may already be making books and cards using the built-in capabilities of iPhoto. But there are other sources out there for making books too.
Blurb is a piece of software you download to your computer. It’s for Mac and Windows. Then you paste images and text, you can resize images, you can format text, you can use their design themes. It’s very similar to the way iPhoto lets you create books.
The book sizes are slightly different, as are the themes, so you might like the options here more than the ones in iPhoto.
They even have a “book ideas” page, so you can see what others have done, and you can browse through other people’s books for sale, again to get an idea of the range of possibilities. None of this is available in iPhoto.
Also unlike iPhoto, Blurb has the added benefit of saving your book on its website, so that you can send people to the Blurb site to purchase copies of your book, at whatever price you specify. Blurb keeps the “printing costs” and you get to keep the markup.
If you’re not feeling confident about your design ability, Blurb allows you to find and hire a book designer.
All in all, Blurb might be an easier way to get started with creating your own book. I’ve used Blurb and found it to be easy to use, and I liked having different options than the ones in iPhoto, just to try out different design ideas.
Blurb book sizes and prices:
- Square, 7×7 inches, starts at $13 (available in paperback and hardcover)
- B/W Text, 5×8 inches, starts at $5 (for books with text only, no images; available in paperback and hardcover)
- Standard Portrait, 8×10 inches, starts at $20 (available in paperback and hardcover)
- Standard Landscape, 10×8 inches, starts at $20 (horizontal format, and available in paperback and hardcover)
- Large Landscape, 13×11 inches, starts at $55 (horizontal format, hardcover only)
- Large Square, 12×12 inches, starts at $60 (hardcover only)