Finally progress!

I feel like I'm finally making progress...I decided that I am going to use Blurb to do my book, a somewhat random decision on my part. Although I do like that they have storefront where I can put the book up for sale. I started setting up the layout and putting in the words and pictures I could find. At this point I seem to be 8 photos short - one of which I have, I just don't have any idea where the digital copy is (luckily I know it exists as its the hardest to take a random shot of). It seems it may be time to start harassing my friends and family to go take pictures for me so that I can get this thing done before next summer.

Photos needed:
Yellow bikes
bluebonnets
UT tower lit up orange
Elisabet New Sculpture at the Capital
Inner Space Caverns
Hill Country flowers
Bats

Tasks accomplished

I actually accomplished several of the things I was aiming to do while I was back in Texas. Several of the pictures have now been taken, of course there are also several new ones that need to be worked out (I swear sometime I'll get them all sorted out). I seem to have found the hoard of original pictures taken on my mom's computer and brought them back with me. My favorite photo task was taking pictures of the Roller Derby...my those girls can skate quite nervy.



I also, thanks to my brother-in-law have a much better idea of what couplets need some work and which are okay. We rewrote several of them completely, hence the completely new pictures needed. Unfortunately this happened towards the end of my visit so I just ran out of time to get around the city. Happily though, a location in Buda, my hometown and now a suburb of Austin, will soon feature in a rhyme.

All in all, progress was made, unfortunately my timeline seems to be extending again until I can get back to take more photos - or perhaps convince someone else to take them for me.

To Do

I'm actually back in Austin for a few weeks, which is ideal to get a few tasks done. I'm hoping to take care of at least three things while I'm here.

(1) Take a few of the pictures that are summer worthy: bats, roller derby, Stevie Ray Vaughn statue, Amy's Ice Cream, Treaty Oak
(2) Convince my brother-in-law to sit down with me and discuss the rhyme scheme of my couplets...hoping more of them are okay then I had feared.
(3) Find where I stored the original files of the pictures that I used for the book the first time around. I know I have them all digitally somewhere...the question is where?

If I can get those three things done then I should be in pretty good shape to actually do some real work on the book once I'm back in Istanbul.

Tasks

So I already know of several things that I'm going to need to do before I even get to the publishing phase of this process.

1. pictures Figure out which of the pictures I used are my own, and which aren't. Work on replacing those that I can't use in a book. I see several options for this:

• wait until I'm back in Austin and take replacement pictures. I see problems with this for a couple of them as they would require certain times of the year (bluebonnets, Zilker tree) or specific events (roller derby, SXSW)
• convince friends/families to take these pictures for me and allow me to use them. This is tricky too...I'd have to be happy with them, and I'm not sure my relationships need that stress. And how do I explain exactly what I want when I'm not entirely sure?
  
• Could I use photos from flickr that are under a creative commons license? I need to do a bit more research into that. If they are only under an attribution license does that mean I can use them in a commercial endeavor as long as I give credit?
• Register/buy them off of i-stock photo. Fairly cheap, definitely allowed to use these for commercial use. The question is will they have everything that I want pictures of?

2. words The book is pretty much a two line rhyme for each letter of the alphabet. Some of these I'm not entirely happy with. Some of them I just don't think sound right, or don't have the same rhyme scheme. I guess the first step is to look at syllable counts. Is that all that matters, or does the rhythm that you speak in matter as well?

3. cover This is the thing I have the hardest time with in all the books I've done. Scrapbooks, alphabet books...it doesn't matter. I'm never happy with how the cover comes out. And if I'm going to try to sell this, then the cover really matters. It's what will make people pick up the book if they look at it. Do I try to do this myself? Put up multiple options for other people to vote on? Hire someone to advise me? Hire someone to create it? Can I afford to hire someone?

steps

My sister sent this my way. Another blog post about creating your own book. It just outlines the basic steps to self-publishing, and definitely give a few things to think about.