Design A Photo Book

1. Photo Books Intro: Hello out there I am multimedia artists. David Miller. I'm talking to you from a studio I have in Phoenix, Arizona Metro, and I want to welcome you to this course on making photographic books. There's a lot of photographers out there who I genuinely believe, that the digital presentation of their images is satisfactory. They probably grew up in an era that leans heavily towards working with tablets, kindles viewing photos through things like Flicker on Instagram. I'm from the generation. Just a little bit before that, I absolutely remember the joys of sitting in a bookstore and pouring through shelves and shelves and shelves of incredible photo books. And I certainly couldn't do that, uh, at libraries and specialty bookshops. Sadly, when you go into your chain bookstores, there aren't as many shelves of photo books, and when you do see them, they tend to be greatest hits packages, you know, the best of National Geographic and so forth. So, honestly, I do understand if you are skeptical about the idea of creating photo books, especially if you're self publishing them. If you've checked out some of the sites that do self publishing's that just blurb one of the sites that we will be talking a lot about. In this course, you're look at the pricing of the pages and say, That's fine if I want to do a vanity product if I want to do a gift but creating works that I could sell it's just too high a price point. I totally understand where you're coming from there, but we're going to sort of put aside what modern culture tells us we should have in our house is we're gonna put aside price points at the moment. And let's just talk about what photo books have contributed to. Photography is a hole. The photography book is a way that you can have a direct relationship with a viewer that you've never met, where they can honor your work by keeping a physical representation of it within the confines of their house. It is a way that you as a photographer can summarize the whole Siri's ah whole body of work in such a way that people don't have to go to the gallery show to get the effect. And that's in direct contrast with how a lot of people experience photography today. If it using Instagram they'll see maybe one of your photos. Or if you have a couple set up to swipe, they'll see up to 10 of them in a row, and then they move on. They move on, and their interaction with those photos on their phone is the same as their interaction with all photos on their phone, which is viewing it on a specific size with a specific finish to it and completely out of context, Uh, completely mixed in with all other photos. Good and bad. Intentional artworks next to snapshots is not the ideal way. You want your work to be seen and understood by any viewer, so that's where the photo book comes in. You're creating physical representations that are exactly what you want, the way you want it, with different finishes of paper, the one that's most appropriate for your work. With no other distractions included, you're not going to have advertisements. Random snapshots show up in the middle of your book. It is a way to have a direct relationship with a viewer, So if this sounds like something that's of interest to you and away that you honor your own photography, your own artwork, then you're in the right place because that's my attitude towards photo books. There have been a lot of photo books over the years that affected me profoundly. There are a lot that I have owned a lot that I have owned for only period of time when it was relevant to me. Um, but I think that the majority of the classic art photographers created intentional books that summarized there themes, their ideas. And that's how the majority of people in the world came to understand their work as well. They didn't see it on a website and totally get it. They didn't experience it as a interactive Pdf with audio so on so forth they didn't intend . The gallery shows the museum shows that were states away, they had access to the photo books, and that is the purest, most accessible way to communicate your ideas in your artwork. 2. Format Choices: Hey guys, I am making some books today using Book Right, which is a software from blurb. Blurb is a self publication website that has a wide variety of books that you can create photo books being sort of the standard of what most people want. Trade books being the thing that I make the most of because thes air small and a lot cheaper to make, he checked the prices out here. It's to 99 for 24 pages for a six by nine book, and I've done a few of these. At this point, they're really high quality, and I find it's a lot easier to sell something that's cheaper than it is to sell something that's more expensive. So regular photo book prices for like an eight by 10 which is the one that I've been making this year. It starts at 22 bucks, but that's only 20 pages. And if you make something that is like 50 pages big, um, it can be somewhere in the neighborhood of like 35 bucks for color. If you want to make a profit on it, you have to price those books at like $50 Once you get that high, it's just really difficult to get people Teoh part with $50 cash over something that's like I I sell by trade books for $10.15 dollars. And it's not that hard for somebody to do the mental calculations if they want to part ways with $15 cash than if they want to part ways with $50 cash. Also, the trade books are very similar to zines, and when I do see infest, these are things that can be on my table. Um, Zine culture in general is something that I really like being part of. So it kind of works out for me and the kind of photography that I do that I make something that's six by nine $15 trade book over some sort of like $50.60 dollars coffee table boutique item. That just doesn't seem to be the crowd that buys my stuff. And that's not really this kind of crowd I'm gonna cater to anyways, so I'm gonna go ahead and select the six by nine trade book. I'm going to make it black and white because black and white is a lot cheaper. If we check out the prices. Here we go. Standard color and the soft cover. You see that? It starts at 7 99 $14 Additional pages. You switched to black and white. You're looking at 4 99 with three cents per additional page. So I'm gonna pick the standard black and white white and coated and soft cover. I got 4.9 for 24 pages. As far as book sizes. I find something in the neighborhood of 36 to 50 pages is satisfying. I feel like 24 is kind of a little weak. Um, especially when I'm gonna put my images in there. But I'm gonna have some horizontal images and don't want those as double page spreads. This book is a little small for placing a photograph sideways on one side of the page. If I have to put a horizontal image, I'd rather it just take up the whole amount of real estate between two pages. Uh, this is gonna be one of my noir books, so I'm gonna title it in war one. Anwar is sort of a catch all term that I have for the photography that I have. That's a little bit retro. That sort of references the work of the artist from the 19 thirties forties fifties. People like Man Ray up to and including Richard Abadan. Now I'm talking about my photographs, not the photographs of those artists, but there, guys that really highly influenced me. I find that a lot of the models and makeup artists I tend to work with have a little bit of a retro aesthetic to them. They look like they could be starlets from another era, And I'm also highly influenced by just sort of that new are surreal vibe that you get from people like Orson Welles retro horror stuff, the Surrealist from the 19 thirties. 3. Selecting Photos: Here's my basic page layout. Each page is just a single photo. When you switch to the layouts tab in book, right? You have few options. Some of them are not usable, Really? For something this small, something like this, with four images, would be fine. If therefore, very similar images, like a sequence of events. I'll go ahead and use this, but most of the time when I make my books, I just use the simplest layout possible that gives the image is the most space to sing, and that's gonna be full page verticals or the double page spread, which is this option here. Let's go ahead and import some photos for this project. I chose almost 200 images. Then I call Anwar girls, and I'm gonna whittle it down to something in the neighborhood of 30 in the end. Now select all of these. And as you can see from my thumbnails, I have ones that are sort of straight pin up beauty. I have ones that are a little more graphic design e. I have ones that fit more of the retro horror aesthetic science fiction, and I have ones that are very abstract that have a lot of blurs to them, and I have ones that are a little more fashion e that our minimalist in the way that this one is lots of choices, and you could simply hit auto create have book, right? Papa Lee, all of your pages. Use all your photos and call it good. But I don't think that's satisfying from an art book. Perspective on art book, much like a gallery show, should have some kind of consistent theme that runs across all the images, and it shouldn't just be a greatest hits package. Nor should it be something randomly selected by a program. It has to have thought and intent to it because your book is the art piece. It isn't the individual pieces of art that go into it. If if that was the way it was, then I might as well just stick these images on instagram. But my personal publications, these trade books are intended to summarize a concept, a vibe, feeling if you will, and I have enough images that I could make multiple additions of this noir project. So for the very 1st 1 I'm gonna go straight for it. Anwar means black in French, and it's meant to evoke something sinister and shadowy, so I am gonna pick those images for anything else. 4. Creating A Cover: for that cover I'm gonna pick one that I already know is kind of like a ah hit on social media and got published in black and White magazine. I think this is also the kind of cover that is, I don't say generic enough, but it does feature a silhouette, so it isn't built entirely around a single model, a single face. It has the retro hairstyle. It has the surreal effect to the side of it. And since it's already been published, I've already sold this image before on my Etsy shop and on Instagram. I know that it's an image that has some appeal with people who aren't in my family or the model of the pickup artist. I know that there's people out there that will see this and respond to it, So I'm going to use that as my cover, and certainly you can do typefaces and stuff in photo shop on the original image and then import that. But there are text tools within book right there, right here. So I am going to go ahead and draw my text box. If you're worried if you're censored or not, you can use this little directional finder and position things. So you know, it's centered within the space. This purple area here is the no fly zone, and the red line in the middle of it is the trim area. That means that the book will be cut by blurb along this line and this purple area. You're not supposed to have any text but into it. So if you're looking at this and you're saying that doesn't look very centered, it's almost up to the purple line. It is centered. It's just that you're advised not to put anything over there. I know I've received some materials back from blurb, and they've been trimmed a little bit differently. If I had text in the purple area on one of those other additions trade books, it probably would have been cut in that area, and that would not have been a good thing. So go ahead, double click it to add text. You can type away, see how small it is, the fond it is. Ah, I hit command A on my Mac book, and it highlights everything this point. I am going to alter the font size to something that's gonna be legible, something like 35 might suit my purposes because the cover is black and has a lot of great tone area. I'm going to go ahead and change it to white font, and at this point, I'm going to find a fondue that's here or one that I've imported, which will show up down here and out of these one of them is going to be the most suitable thing for my book. Every book cover has a font in its soul that is thematically suitable to it. This is a noir book. It should have something that's mid 20th century. It definitely deserves more than plain old Ariel Fonds that we have here. The fonts that you import are not gonna be good for when it's time for blurb to generate an e book. In that case, I would recommend doing this cover generation cover design in w photo shop, but I'm gonna go ahead and use one of the more old timey fonts. That blurb comes with Averil. Fat face is very ideal for what I'm working with this material, Averil Fat face is very ideal for this particular kind of material. And I think if I make it larger. And instead of saying number one like a comic, I go volume one, space it so the name and the volume are equal sizes. See how that's looking there. When you have this morning, these warnings are not to be ignored. I would address every warning as if it was life or death. So by touching the purple, that gives him the warning backing it off. It's OK now. One thing I'm not so happy about with this design as it is, is the volume one popping off from Anwar. Two ways to solve this one is to just reduce the font size again until it's equal something like that. 27 points. Also, I don't have to have my text aligned all the way to the left. I can use center alignment, and that's going to solve that problem there. I intend to make more than one volume of this particular trade book, so having something that I can use is a consistent trade dress, a find that comes with book right and a particular alignment and font sizes that I can remember that's gonna work out in my favor. And in an ideal world, my second volume would have. Same font, same size, same location. Maybe it utilizes one of these other pictures that has more white space and is black. So this addition, though, is going to be the very shadowy, very dark issue. Uh, because it is all my work, I'll also make sure Do you know Tate who it's by if I was famous, Having my name in giant letters on the cover would mean something because I'm not famous in him selling more of the vibe in the artwork than, uh, here's more images by David Miller. I'm gonna I'm okay. I'm okay with it being small and in the lower corner, Not a bad cover design. If I do say so myself, One thing I might change is keep it one long line. And I like that. It starts on the black area of the model and runs up to the edge of the book. Now, most artwork, uh, the Tim one good design tip for majority of artwork in the world is giving the viewer a reason to look all over your piece. Whether it's graphic design, a photograph of painting someone and so forth unless it's sort of an all over pattern like an Afghan rug. I would encourage you to think about how you want someone to spend time on your piece and look around. If I spread text here here, I have the eye line going here. There's something of interest throughout the peace and the fact that this particular image has a flow to her hair, a flow to her back. Which leads to this photographs by David Miller section That is a great way to have your viewers brain engaged. That is very important. No matter what kind of artwork you're making. You don't want people to look at it for a second and get all they could possibly get out of it. That's why we discourage a lot of center placement of text center placement of all the important parts, having people looking directly at the camera so on and so forth. You want your viewers to be engaged, and one way is by judiciously placing your elements throughout your piece, keeping focus of where things air flowing, keeping focus of where I lines are where directional lines are headed. She's looking this way. There's a line that leads up to New are her back leads to this text down here. Now that I've created my cover and I know the theme I'm about ready to move on to my pages . I'll come back to the back cover on a trade book you have so much real estate to work with , and I'll add a few more pages in this. But when you get to the last page, uh, it's advised that you don't have any material here. It all be a text or photograph. I'll show you what happens when you put something on the last page. You get a warning for trade books. Blurred advises you not to place content the last page of your book. Otherwise, during the printing process for six additional blank page will be added to your book. So I'm not gonna do that. Normally, in a photographic book, I either puts information about myself on the last page of the first page, but because I don't want it, have the additional pages added from blurb on the covers, the back cover. That's where I will put my social media links my website any other additional information about me because really, the back cover doesn't serve any other purpose. Besides telling you more about myself, 5. Laying Out Pages: getting to the pages. The default page count is 24. I'm going to click manage pages, and I'm going to hit the plus icon here. Doesn't matter at this stage, whether I had at the beginning of the end of the book, because I don't have anything placed on any of these pages, but I am going to add 12 pages. That's not an option here. It's 10. I hit that. Then I'll do plus again and add to for a page counts that and after I've added 10 pages, I'll add two more to get to 36. I find this is a good size for the kind of trade books that I like to make, and it also means that I'll get a product that I can sell for something the neighborhood of 15 to $20 without any issues back to book. I'm gonna populate my pages one at a time before I do so. I need a little strategy for what I might want as double page spreads, anything that's horizontal. As I said before, I want that to be laid out across two pages and I'll go ahead and show you the difference between placing a horizontal on one page where I have a lot of white space above a lot of white space below and the same image as a double page spread. This is just a lot more impressive toe look at. I think this image in particular is really good for a double page spread to because this figure back here is the shadow cast by the model on this page. So there's something that crosses over all the way. An image that probably would not work so well as a double page spread would be something that has a feature in the center. So going to my photos, I grab this image even though it's spreading the model out. She's here, and we have an object over here. You have to realize this center of the double page spread is the part of the book that is creased so her hair and her forehead are going to be in the middle of the book. They're not gonna be visible. It's possible that nobody else would notice this flaw. But I know when I look at something like that, where a person's face is split across the crease of a book it looks really bad to me, and I don't I think that this image as much as I like it and is a I think it's suitable for the aesthetic of the book. I just don't feel like it can afford a double page spread. So this would be one I would avoid using. I might even trash can out of my choices. I'm gonna keep it in here for now. This is another one that's similar where the model's face is just going to be printed in the middle of everything, and it's not gonna work out. That said, you can reposition your layouts like so if your image is large enough. So in this case, these dots, which are actually on the 35 millimeter film that I shot this image on, they eat up quite a bit of real estate, and I could end up with something aesthetically pleasing. Now the model's face does not fall into this in her crease. Ultimately, though, I'm gonna leave that one to the side. You often find when you make these books that you have similar images and one suits the purpose in the design of the book better than the one that wasn't going to work out. Go ahead and place this one here and because my book is going to have full bleed pages, which means that the image is spread all the way across them. Uh, go ahead, stretch that out. The image on its facing page needs to have something that links it. Thematically, I have another one of these kind of weird 35 millimeter film pieces that has this snowy texture inherent on it that can work. They were shot at the same time on the same day, just with different models. Another thing that I could use is one of the ones that utilizes some funky led lighting, which I have a few of here as you scroll across your thumbnails, depending on the kind of photography, do you think you're going to find a lot of commonalities? For example, this lady has wet hair and a rugged texture behind her, and she's wearing was actually a dancer's leotardo, but it does have sort of a lingerie texture to it. This lady is wearing a slip, and she has kind of a wire looked her. Those two images. They also have very similar framing with the arm up and the Brighton dies. If I was to pick a new page place one next to the other, I think the similarities are very apparent, and these images help support each other. They're different enough that the viewer would get something out of each image individually . But the framing of Head Teoh rib cage is the same look is somewhat similar. This background is something actually projected there, but they're just very wild people, so I like seeing those side by side. As much as I like seeing these two side by side, I think that the placement of where this model is in her elbow pointing doesn't quite support the one that's over here. This one's just so bright, and this one's so dark. In contrast, I'd like to see something with one of these that has a similar magic aesthetic. I think these to support each other a little bit better, something that's happening on this page, where she's tossing what in reality were led lights feels like it flows into this page with her elbow pointing at the model over here 6. Sequences of Images: now, certainly in your own book design, you probably will find a scenario like this where you have images that are in a sequence. He's all involve the model shaking your head to a slow shutter speeds on. Uh, they gave pretty trippy effect. They're a sequence. So if I liked these images enough to have more than one, it certainly would make sense to have them sit next to each other on facing pages. Nothing wrong with that. It's a strategy for book design. Uh, something that is a sequence like this, though, where things are so similar. This is where I go into layouts, and I select the layouts that have multiple images because I think that, um, as few pages as I have in my book, I want to make sure that the reader is going to get their money's worth and don't want to eat up a whole bunch of real estate with a sequence. If we were making a comic book, it would be the same thing where a character was doing a sequence of events like planting a bomb and sneaking around a building. It just would not make sense to spend a whole bunch of pages to show each little detail when you could easily have smaller panels and get the same effect. So I'm gonna put a few of these here, in fact, because I only have three that looked really similar and then to that look quite different . I'm going to see if there is a layout that has three images to it. We have three horizontal Zell's. We have some duos not finding one that has three verticals. Do you see this page and think it might be more suitable because it takes away the gutters in between the images? Even though my photos started off as verticals, there's no reason they need to stay that way for the purposes of this book. What if we did something a little more clever? This reminds me of a Children's book that has varying parts of people bearing parts of faces, and you're able to flip each one of those panels individually so you could have a cowboy's hat and eyes. You could have a woman's nose, and you can have ah, old lady's lips below. What if we did something like that? And then I shifted design a little bit, correcting my boxes before I get the warning signs, because I knew that's exactly what that orange means. It's an idea, probably not one I'm going to stick with, but it is important to know that there are a lot of layout choices you have. You're not stuck to single images or double page spreads. If you need Teoh, dump something. If you need to trash it, click on the box. Find the trash can hit that you need to get rid of the entire container trash can that I think. Ultimately my solution for this is to have two small versions of The Blur, like so and one large version of The Blur, which is a little bit different and of my choices, I think that one's pretty cool. That one's OK, but she's off centered, and that one's quite similar to the other one. Think those two and this one support each other very well. I don't need the text boxes. Put them in the trash can. Now, having looked at this set up and seeing what I've got going on with the other pages, I'm noticing that this sequence of photos is not quite a shadowy as ah suits the concept. It's still strange in the way that images like this are a little off putting and strange. But looking at this particular model with her outfit and her tattoos, I'm realizing I do have an image that suits the overall theme of the book a little bit better. And what I'm getting out of this particular picture isn't as different as these other ones that I've included. So this particular image where she's just smoking a cigarette, I think, really fits the aesthetic of this material. But it adds to it. And because this model is so distinctive with her tattoos on her chest, I'm fine with the blurry images next to the one with smoke. I think that ultimately they support each other because there is something common. It's the same person I know. They were shot at the same time under the same circumstances. Just two slightly different concepts, one involving smoke and the other involving blurs. But the curling of the smoke also suits this sort of wild blurring that she's doing. She is just the thing in motion in this picture, and the smoke is the element that's in motion in this photograph, 7. The Flow Of Your Pages: now, the sequence of the pages as I've been designed them here isn't something that really matters at this stage. I'm just trying to populate the pages I have because ultimately I'm going to go into manage pages and want to see the flow of everything here. And I'm gonna be able Teoh, pick up and reposition things in a way that I could do on this sidebar. But it's just easier to see the full project within this manage pages window. So I'm not gonna worry about the sequence right now. I'm gonna wait till I get all my images here and then see how it flows A lot of times with photographic books. The flow might be how emotional things are, how they make you feel. A lot of times, the flow of my books tends to go from something that's lighter to something that's darker, real heavy with the blacks towards the last third of the book, and then something that's kind of spiritual. If I were to be pretentious about it, which I am going to because it's my book, but something that that sort of summarizes the project but also is more ethereal and this kind of sequencing of artwork is what I get out of a lot of the music. I listen to the way they sequence an album. Usually the first song of an album is something that's a really good taster introduction to a particular flavor of the whole project. So as I look at my thumbnails up here, something like this, which I would use in a double page spread anyways. But this is just too strange and weird to utilize as the initial image. Not to mention that I don't have a lot of other work that looks quite like this. Um, something like this is probably a more suitable intro page because she is wearing an elegant dress that has kind of retro patterns and could be mistaken for lingerie or something. That's evening where let's just say that she also has this really messy, hair wet look. There's a lot of shadows in this particular image. I think I'll give that a shot for my very first picture. Now I've been stretching the photos to get them to fit in the containers. There is an option within the photo menu when you click on your image and you have fit to frame, filter, frame, fill the frame is the one that I usually choose because I want it to go full bleed on the page so you can't see where you're filling all the way. If you're unsure if this bit goes all the way to the edge of the page where that's light purple, Linus, click the image filter frame and look right will take care of that for you. 8. Playing WIth Design: This particular model is an actress, and she has some really good looks that I like. I like this textured background, another sequence of textured backgrounds shot in super bright sun against this corrugated metal. Those might work well when placed next to each other again, much like my blurry face images, though they're very similar, so I'll probably make use of the same strategy I did on that other one. Find the two images that next to each other, delete the text boxes don't need him, and those seem to sit well together. One thing about the way I took thes or crop them is that, uh, I did not align this bent. She's standing on very well, zooming closer. That could be a simple case of repositioning the photo and shrinking the boxes. So everything aligns a little bit better, even move this one over, so the figure has a little more space away from the other version of herself. As for an image that can go along with it, I have a couple choices here. Same model, same outfit, two different expressions, this one. As much as I like this image, there's a silliness to it that doesn't quite fit the vibe of the book as this one does. Not to mention that her eye line is heading towards this page over here. So going to go ahead and go with this one, the decisions you make may feel like things you need to struggle with. You need to sleep on for me. I run on a lot of pure instinct, but when in doubt, I usually go with either the most emotionally resonant image, the one that seems to have the most meaning or the one that suits the concept of the book or the one that design wise fits the best in that order. I almost always default to whatever the most emotionally resonant image is, and I'm not really sure what the emotion of this one is. I love the Post definitely has some power to it. I'd like her expression a lot, but, uh, in a world where one is very straightforward and powerful with the emotion that one's gonna win, it helps that design wise, it suits the overall aesthetic of the book lots of texture I line going in this direction when you have people facing one direction or the other you really should have them looking at the next page of the book. Having this page on this side does not help the design aesthetic of the book, even though I could point to these pages as having too small on the left, one large on the right. There's no reason for this to match it exactly. She looks this way. It makes the viewers I go this way. That's the best design choice of all options available. 9. Editing The Overall Book: Okay, At this point, I have laid out my pages. I have not started sequencing them yet. I want toe go through really quickly and tell you some of the decisions that I ended up making and also make some decisions on the fly in front of you. One thing that I did waas stretch my horizontal photos in a way that left a little bit of a white paper gap. Um, the reason for this is because of one particular image here that when I had it filling the frame, it just pushed all the interesting information off to the side. That's not what I wanted. And once I did fit to frame and saw that I had this white bar up here, White bar down here much like widescreen movies. Uh, I was happy with that. I'm OK with that if it helps the picture maintain its integrity. So I did that to all my widescreen photos, these eyes, this girl and the wave. So on and so forth. Now, looking at my layout, I wanna have a couple pages that are both a model on one side and a model on the other. Rather than having the double page spread or something. That's kind of a different part of the design where I have, like, the two small images. So I'm gonna kick this back, and I like it for visual variety. I'm just going to shift them around so they're spaced for really evenly throughout the book with this set of pages, I ended up doing to the same model because I really like both of these images. I felt like her poses were interesting in both of, um, I also, um, reused the model who had the bloody makeup over here. And I felt like it was overkill to have so many of those images spread throughout. I just went ahead and picked the most emotional, resonant image here. She doesn't have her knife prop that she had in the image that I originally had sequence, but I felt like this one as much as I like it as an image, it's very actress E, and this one is a little more harsh and immediate, and I felt like that was the better choice. Out of all the choices I had this particular sequence. What holds them together is the shadows of the hands. Now in placement. I think that this one should go over here so back to manage pages, pick this one up, move it over. And I think it registers as a little better design. These images are similar in the shadows that crisscross the models faces. But I also feel like they're not as hard hitting as some of the other ones I have. And so I'm gonna move that closer to the front and keep the ones that have a little more weirdness the more surreal elements towards the back. Because I think that's the sequence of the book. Uh, swap this one for this one. Make sure there's some double page spreads that build up in the back. So we've got one double page spread. We want that at least three in. I think this sequence is looking a lot sharper. Got some real disturbing ones in a row here. Go ahead and move this double page spread down in between the's singles. So we have single image, single images, double page spread, single images, unusual layout, single images, single images, double page spread, single images, unusual layout, single images, HelpAge single images, double page single images, unusual layout double page and then we wrap. The only other complaint I might have is that my wrap up is, uh, two of the same model, one that has a very almost bloody look to it, even though I know that's just a projection of some random colors and then the birthday cake. But one thing I really like about the birthday cake as the final image is that it's rewarding the viewer both of these air looking directly at the viewer and there, there, congratulating you on making it through a harsh zien so fairly happy with this, particularly out. One more. Look, sir, it gotta make sure that's on my back cover. I placed the information that I want, which is just going to be who I am and what this is about, where they can find more of me. I add the same information on the back of all of my trade books, and that is basically my website in my social media. Same font, nice and large Go through the final steps. We've got fix your book warnings very important to do all of this because once you place an order, you want to make sure that you're spending money on things that aren't broken. Okay, No more warnings. Book info. Got that taken care of. We're going to preview the whole thing. Book, right? Allows you to export a pdf proof. This is gonna have a few bits of water marking on it. And it's also gonna be small enough, pdf that you're not gonna be able to print it. So don't get the idea that you're able Teoh simply kick off a pdf out of a book, right? And print it yourself. Now, this process of previewing your book is something that you have to dio there's no way around it, and you're probably gonna find a lot of mistakes in the process. One of those common mistakes I find is that I forgot to spread a photo out all the way across in the way that I wanted to be. Or I find that some of this stuff is, uh, a little less exciting when viewed this way. Then when I took them individually when I, for example, this particular image, uh, even though I like it as a picture of that model compared Teoh this girl with more unique makeup and the skull this image just isn't cutting it for me. So that's probably going to get the axe, get replaced with something else. 10. Final Choices: if you've never edited a book, if you're not confident in your ability to judge the works that you make, it really is helpful to get an extra pair of eyes. Get a friend involved somebody whose opinion you value certainly not worth it to just throw the whole project up on social media and ask random people what they think because their opinions have no context. When you are choosing critic, make sure you're choosing a well informed critic who's gonna help you out. I'm gonna go ahead and delete that picture. Find something that sequentially will match the girl in this skull. No, this particular image was shot in the same day in the same time, and I'm a big fan of that one. However, it's just too pretty for this particular sequence. This one is nice and shadowy. It actually is very similar to the cover, and at this point, it's kind of up to you. If you feel like you should utilize your cover image within your book when I'm reviewing this cover, I'm realizing that this one actually is covered in writing and it would be beneficial to have a clean version of that in the book, so I'm going to put that in there, swap the pages, see if that achieves what I'm looking for. I do like this image as a match. The only issue is that they're both facing the same direction. And if you're not too precious about your photos, you probably could use photo shop and flip that one around. So it's facing this direction. But I am one of those people who is very precious about their photos, and they don't feel like altering it just for the sake of this book. A minute. Back up. Leave that one, see if I have any other options that are suitable, and I think I have a solution. Another option is to take this page. Swap this one with this one. It's not the same model, but there's, ah, certain similarity to their physicality. I'm thinking works also the idea that this one is silhouetted in this war and you can make out quite a bit of her. They're looking at each other. I think that works as a pair. We go back to these two. This one is just simply too pretty. I think my next edition of more will focus on very pretty pictures, less messy and scary. So I'm gonna acts that one. For now, this one is quite messy and scary. Doesn't really match this particular image. This one, I feel like his little weaker. It isn't as punchy as a lot of the other choices we have. This one is of the very same model, but with a lot more shadow to it. I think that's a suitable replacement. And then within managing pages, because this one has the rain element and this one has the water element. I'm going to position it so rain leads into water. I think I have a sequence that I'm a lot happier with. Everything seems Teoh add up. It features a lot of the same models. So we have a model in Mackenzie here, here and here. We have a model named Alina Here. Here we have Cheyenne here, Here, here, here, here we have Clementine's here here, another of Shan That's Clementine's quite a few similar faces throughout I think it holds together as a work going to go ahead uploaded order my copies