My first self published book

Self publishing a photo book is easier than you think. I have done it myself in the past so I know it can be done. I am not going to lie to you it was frustrating to do.  Yet, the drive to accomplish the goal kept me pushing forward until I did it.  

The photo book I wanted to create was one of photographs of a flood that wiped out 2/3 of my hometown. It was a photographic essay of the damage. Here is a link for it on Amazon. 

I tried to compose it in MS word, but was unable to do so, so I downloaded open office and went that route.  I had to move all the images in one directory, and saved the open office file there as well.  In that word processor, I was able to insert, resize and format the photos the way I needed to. I wrote the text in MS word and then copied and pasted it into Open Office. 

After it was all exactly as I wanted it to be I saved it as a pfd file and uploaded it to Createspace, I choose to use that website to handle the self publishing of the photo book because I had created other books there. I knew it would be a low profit margin but I wanted the book to get out there so people could buy it. Because it was in full color, the profit margin was low.  I had to make it twenty bucks, so that I could make at least a $5 dollar profit on it. I was splitting that $5 bucks with my community.

Would I take this route of self publishing a photo book again? Sure, I would because even with the low profit margin the book has merit. People want this book because it is a part of local history.