Online publishers for your artist books
July 2, 2008 by Cyndi Lavin
Filed under Home & Living
Disclaimer: I have not personally used any of these publishers. I believe that in all cases, you retain complete copyright to your materials; these companies are just printers. I cannot vouch for the professionalism or quality of any of them! Buyer beware 
That said, here’s a list of publishers who will do small runs (even just one copy, some of them). It’s self-publishing without the huge cash outlay of having to have 10,000 copies printed…and pay for all of them yourself.
I’d love to hear from anyone who’s actually used any of these companies: were you pleased? Were you treated well? How were the images? Did you have a lot of freedom to select what you wanted?
Blurb
Lulu
MyPublisher
Snapfish
BookSurge
EditionOne Studios
I tried using LuLu and kept having problems getting my photos loaded. AFter spending TWO days trying, I threw my hands up and went with Blurb. I was very happy to find that they give an instructional video to find out how to create your book, and it was really easy to do. I had books printed of my 8 yr-old son’s photographs to give his teachers as year end gifts. I also had a couple of books printed for Mother’s day and they also turned out really well. I was very happy. While I can’t say I was happy using LuLu, I have received books they have printed and they are beautiful. Maybe there was something weird going on with the website when I was trying to hard. Anyway, two whole days is a lot of time to waste so I’d probably go with blurb again in the future.
Thanks so much for the insight Angie. I have seen things published by lulu, and thought they were quite well done. But I can’t vouch for the experience of using any of them, so I appreciate your sharing this.