Any websites/good advice for making a book?

Lulu.com comes to mind. It’s a self-publishing website that is geared toward people who wish to sell their work. However, I am sure the service would be suitable for the purposes you have in mind. They have a special section just for the making of poetry books. The only area (that comes to my mind at the moment) to watch out for is price. It’s easy to overboard on design.

Make sure the story is flowing. Every sentence must make sence. The story must hook the reader. Use figurative language. Use strong adjectives and verbs. Use all five senses th put the reader in to the scene.

To publish, go to a website (I forgot the name, sorry) and see what happens! :)

@pizzaman: Please remember to read the details section of qestions before answering! @sevenfourteen is asking about making a book, not writing one. Thanks!!

I really like using Instructables.

This is quite a nice book. As is this, it could be made bigger.

But have a look around, there are plenty of guides on there.

I am a Heritage Makers Consultant, which does printed books or individual pages. I have done some recipe books, with lots of text, large titles, captions and just basic text. You can pull in background “papers” and photos, plus embellishments, or just leave the background in white and pull in photos and embellishments like scroll work. There is an assortment of book sizes that you can get, including 8½×11. They are nicely bound and once you have it finished, you can order as many as you want, and you can always make changes to any page, add pages, delete pages, etc, prior to ordering again. You can start for free to see how it works. Here is my website link

http://www.MemoryBookArchitects.com

On the following two links, you can see the layouts I have done using this system. The ones with the red line around them are the Heritage Makers layouts. I don’t have any way to show you the recipe books, yet.

http://www.scrapbook-advice.com/Italian-Scrapbook-Layouts.html

http://www.scrapbook-advice.com/Air-Force-Scrapbook.html

Good Luck, it’s a great idea. I have a friend who publishes just like you want to do, poetry with his own photos – up to about 15 books at this point.

Diana

If you are convinced that your book is not “commercial” (and most poetry is not, in this age) a site like Lulu.com can take you as far as your budget will go. We were planning on going that route for a book of narrative and drawings; the project will never be completed now as most of the drawings were never finished. Lulu.com’s approach is good, straightforward and honest though.

Thanks everyone I’m going to check these websites out. I’ve never tried this before but I’m on vacation and I thought it’d be a nice easy project to attempt while I’m home.