Create Your Own Book @LuLu.com #win

September 3, 2010 By Erin Tales

I was reading an article the other day about how many authors are now self-publishing. It’s not as hard as it used to be, especially with websites like Lulu.com to help you through the creation and then marketing of your book. All you have to do is add words, photos – or maybe even get all fancy and add both.

Lulu Photobook - Picture taken with iPhone

Now, when it comes to publishing books I am a little more low-key. I love the professional look of a hard cover and binding over my memories. You see, Lulu also has a program that let’s up choose a book style/theme, upload photos, choose page formats and create a photo book. With summer break officially over, rather than keeping all your memories precariously in digital format, which can be lost in a second when your all-thumbs spouse pushes DELETE ALL on your digital camera or :gasp: your computer crashes and you didn’t have a back up.

And if you think, “Oh, I print out all my photos and put them in a photo album”. It’s just not the same. A Photobook is so sleek, chic and no one can steal your photos from a photobook. Photo albums have pictures go missing as they fall out or some one cleptos that must-have baby picture of your kid.

I’ve done photobooks before with various companies. With Lulu the benefit is you don’t have to download a graphic program to get started. Literally, you log on, choose a theme, upload photos and get going. You can change your theme mid-book, you can choose formats that have textboxes if you want to write on certain pages or you can do pictures only. You can’t modify a page layout, which was my one “con”, since I do like the option of maneuvering elements around pages. But that makes this very simple for a not-as-techie kind of person. If you want what-you-see-is-what-you-get, without any complicated editing or formatting, Lulu is where to go to make your photobook.

Photo for Photobook!

TIP: I did choose the option at one point to allow Lulu to put all of my photos in the book, but I decided against that. No photobook software is ever going to put the photos exactly where you want, so it’s better to do that yourself. Otherwise it’s like asking your husband to hang up the picture frames in a new house – it’s just not going to be what you want. Trust your eye and add photos one at a time.

Overall, I found Lulu easy to use in creating a photobook. And the outcome was great. My book was the square 8.5″ square and I ended up with around 30 pages. The binding was professional, the pages were sturdy and it makes a great gift idea. I mean, this book I made is MINE. But once you make it, you can easily order additional copies for family for the holidays. It really makes gift giving so easy.

And as a side note, I know a lot of my readers are practically pros with their SLRs. Take pictures, compile them in a theme, upload them into a book and self-publish! And once again, you can always order copies to give as a coffee table book to friends and family that love your photos.

Pricing varies on the size you choose. You can see the photo book sizes and pricing here: Lulu Photo Books

WINTMB Win a Lulu Photobook – 8.5″ square w/20 pages

FIRST: MANDATORY ENTRY: Visit Lulu’s Photo book section and tell me what kind of photo book you would make.

SECOND: EXTRA ENTRIES:

To receive these extra opportunities for entries, you must fulfill the first REQUIRED/MANDATORY entry. But for extra entries, you can do the following – leave a comment for each:

Add theMomBuzz to your Twitter and Tweet the contest. Leave your Tweet Link. (1 tweet per HOUR is allowed.)
Ad the Mom Buzz button to your site (see right hand sidebar for code)
Blog about this give-away with a link to this contest and Lulu.com (3 entries, leave 3 comments)

Contest ends 9.24.10. This is open to the USA. Please refer to complete contest rules. The entries listed above are the ONLY entries for this contest. Winners will be notified by e-mail (if supplied in the entry or on profile page), as well as on the Winner’s Wall.