The question of what bookmaking service to use, and how to make the book, has come up a few times lately on Reddit. I combined several of my answers in this post. Realize that I use Blurb.com. I can’t tell you if Blurb.com is the best, or the biggest service. It’s just the service I use. The advice below is all based on using blurb.com:
I have made an annual photo book since 2005. I have used Blurb.com for each. I have been pleased with the results. I’ve used a few methods to make the books, which I’ll discuss below. By far, the easiest method is to use the free, proprietary Booksmart software which Blurb provides.
I’ve tried a few of the book sizes. Most of my books have been Large Landscape 13×11 inches, which is a gorgeous large format size. I have also made a few at Standard Landscape 10×8, which is really not as small as I had originally thought. It’s a very nice size.
I have made a few softcover books, but they are flimsy. I’d definitely recommend hardcover. Choose the imagewrap option, it is gorgeous.
As for number of pages, I have always erred on the side of “more is better”. I have to assume that after I’m gone, the book will be all that anyone will have of my photos. This does make the books kind of boring to go through. Maybe after 5 or 10 years I should put together a “best of” compilation.
I used the BLURB BOOKSMART software that Blurb provides for free. It has more options than using the Lightroom plug-in.
If you’d like to see an example, here’s my 2011 photobook. Click PREVIEW and you should be able to see the whole book.
I would absolutely caption and date the photos. If the entire book is from the same year, you just need a month and day. Also, identify any people in the photos, including yourself or “obvious” people like your parents or children. I have my family’s albums back to 1900 or so, and the most aggravating thing is photos that are not captioned. Or that are simply captioned “your grandfather”. Which one is the grandfather? Whose grandfather is he?
Finally, I’d advise that photos of your family are going to be treasured more than photos of sunsets and flowers. Go out and take the best portraits you can take of your friends and family, and make a book of that. I guarantee you that you’ll treasure that book in 10 years.
What software to use to make the book?
I find that Blurb’s “booksmart” app works well enough for a photo-centered book. It comes with some predefined templates, and you can create your own templates. It works great for a book where you don’t mind using the same design over and over; or, more specifically, a small set of templates over and over (ie, each page is not unique).
You can do it in Photoshop, of course, but Photoshop is not really made for that. (Adobe’s bookmaking software product is InDesign). To use Photoshop, you’d have to either 1) create a separate PSD for each page or 2) create a layer comp for each page.
Either way, in the end if you had a 120 page book, you’d have to export (“save as”) 120 separate exported JPGs (or TIFF’s? Not sure if Booksmart supports TIFF), and import each one into a separate page in Booksmart.
Personally, I think the Photoshop workflow is ridiculous. If you are not a publishing professional I’d recommend Booksmart for its ease of use. If you are a publishing professional, I’d recommend Adobe InDesign. However, since the InDesign subscription is ridiculously expensive, you could look into Scribus, it’s the open source book publishing software. It can do about 80% of what InDesign can do, although you have to wrestle with the interface quite a bit. Anyway, with either Scribus or InDesign, you create the book to the proper sizing specs, export a high-rez PDF, upload the PDF directly to Blurb, and Bob’s your uncle.
I should add, however, that there’s a huge catch to using Booksmart: it’s proprietary software, and therefore you are locked into using Blurb.com forever, at least for reprints, revisions, and new editions of that particular book. I have to admit I switched to using Scribus for a recent genealogy book, which I expect to have many revisions and edits over the years. I didn’t want to be locked into Blurb, and I want to be able to edit the book 10 years from now. Also, each page has a unique design, and the Booksmart template system works very poorly in that scenario. Essentially I’d have to create a unique template for each page, and when I wanted to edit the page layout, switch to Template editing view.
Be aware, though, there’s a much, much higher learning curve using Scribus over Booksmart. And really, who knows if ten years from now either Scribus or Blurb.com will still be around? Or Adobe InDesign, for that matter.