If you take a look at the link above to PHOTO BOOKS then you can see details of the nine travel books that I have done over the years - one for each of my trips to Africa. I love them, mostly because there is something very special about having a hefty 13" x 11" hardback to hold and enjoy.
The biggest downside of them, however, has always been the considerable cost of buying a copy. Obviously, I can get them at cost, but to retail them through Blurb.com results in a cost that is sometimes in excess of £100 per book. If you just want a copy for yourself, then this is quite a considerable outlay and one that I didn't ever expect anyone to make. I have, however, managed to sell a few copies of some of them over the years and this is delightful.
However, I've often wanted to do something about it and now I'm trying to. I have started making my first conversion of one of these books to a smaller and more cost-conscious format. I'm so happy with Amazon's printing of my recent small mammal books that I'm going to convert these larger books down. The first one is nearly ready now and I've settled on an 8" x 10" page size for this series. I'm not tackling them in any particular order, but the first one happens to be the biggest one - Waiting for Water.
Having to change the shape and size of the pages is a challenge. Each subsequent volume is becoming a little easier. I have a routine and system now that makes it about as easy as possible, but it is not a quick process. I'm going to concentrate on getting the conversions made and then go for a staggered publishing sequence once I return from trip ten. It also looks like I will have to get some more RAM for the new desktop computer. I thought 32GB was plenty, but Affinity Publisher is a hungry beast and I'm finding I'm getting low on resources when working with a 200+ page book.
The images show the same pair of pages in both formats, old above and new below at more-or-less the same sizes.
