You might want to look at a service like Kodak’s oFoto, Shutterfly or HP’s SnapFish. While I haven’t used any of these services, they have a facility to produce books from photos. There may be enough flexibility for you to create that coffee table book.

Since they centre their service around photography I would expect the quality of the printed book to be better than some other POD companies.

Cost per copy may still be a factor here, though, as this service would tend to be aimed more at the novelty market.

Either way, it is certainly worth looking into.

Good luck,
Neill.

Thanks for the inquiry. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any suppliers who are able to delivery print on demand color printing at anywhere near the price needed to sell the resulting books in the retail channel. These books are still salable, but the price is high and the markup low. A PDF e-book would work well, and you would eliminate all the problems and costs of printing. To get decent offset prices, you will need to print in Asia and probably use a designer or print broker to best arrange this.

Hope that helps, even though it isn’t good news.

I have just completed writing a book of photographs and first person narratives of homeless, mentally ill people in San Francisco, with an extended introduction and conclusion focusing on the social stigma attached to this group of people. I had intended to use a POD approach to publishing it. I have printed copies through Blurb and Amazon’s Create Space. The quality of Blurb was high, but so was its cost ($100 for a 200 page book). Create Space is clearly not designed for photography. The quality is low.

Do you know of any POD publishing houses that might print a photography book at high quality but reasonable cost? How does Lulu compare to Blurb in this respect?

There are several printing companies in Southeast Asia that print photography books with high quality at low cost. These sell retail in bookstores at $30, but these are printed using an offset process, which I recognize can print at higher quality than POD. Do you know of any companies in that part of the world that use a POD approach, without sacrificing quality.

If I can’t find a suitable POD publisher, I’ll have to sadly give up my wish that this be a “coffee table book,” and instead use an e book approach. Do you know of any e-photography books I could use as a point of reference?

Also, are e books generally read on e book readers or on computer screens? I’m assuming the first, which works better because my book is in a portrait format. The landscape format of a computer screen wouldn’t work as well.

Thanks for your help.

With best regards,

Bob

Robert Okin, MD
Professor Emeritus, Psychiatry
UCSF School of Medicine