I want to make a little book about my family but it’s SO expensive

[ThrelfallYorky]

I'm afraid if I were you, I'd suggest to family:
"Right, I've done it the hard bit now. If you want copies, get on and organise / pay for the printing between you all!"
At least that'd avoid the sad result of paying for it all, then seeing people suddenly don't want a copy / to contribute to the cost of it, or that they can't be bothered to read it.
People value more what they have had to pay for.
TY

[brigidmac]

Ian Nelson ..very impressed by your entrepreneurial enterprise especially about making it into.an audio book

Im aiming to.make an.audio book too ...having voices preserved for prosterity is an extra bonus

Someone earlier suggested subscriptions ...did they mean getting realatives to contribute to the costs which.Yorky also suggested

I agree get some family participation on finding : binders proofreaders printers money etc

Do let us know which solution.you go for in the end

[Josephine]

Would a local print shop be willing to bind something into a book format after you've printed and assembled it?

I've seen family history books that were assembled using cerlox / comb binding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comb_binding

If you only used colour printing for the photos, etc., that would cut down on the cost of printing it yourself. You could use a word processing program such as Word for the text and something more suitable for the graphics (most computers have some sort of basic photo editing program). (In my experience, importing photos into a Word document is a mistake, because they look terrible when they're printed.)

As for the covers, you could make/supply your own. You can buy book board / chipboard. Here's one example: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Cinch-Book-Board-8-5-x-11-2pk-Gray-Chipboard/36489750. I'm sure there are a lot of options at craft/hobby stores and online at Amazon.

You can also repurpose book covers by taking apart old books that you've purchased at a charity shop or from the library discards table. You could use paper or fabric to cover them. Here's an example: https://compassandink.com/how-to-make-a-fabric-cover-junk-journal/. That would take a lot more time and work, though.

I understand the need to keep costs as low as possible. I think it would be fair to price out everything in advance and ask your various family members to pay for the cost of printing and assembling the books; I'm sure they would agree that it's only fair, after you've done all the work of researching, writing, etc. It's not reasonable to expect you to bear the entire cost.

Regards,
Josephine

[Josephine]

You could also try to lower the page count by experimenting with the font(s) and font size(s) that you use. For example, just bringing the font size down from 12 to 11 will make a difference. And some fonts take up less space than others.

You could copy your document (if it's in Word, for example) and use the copy to experiment. That way you won't mess up the formatting in your good copy.

Most books that you buy include information on the font(s) and font sizes used, so you could check out what's been used in any books you have at home for ideas.

Regards,
Josephine

[Josephine]

This might be obvious, but if you decide to print it out yourself, you'd want to make sure that your printer was a laser printer and not an ink jet printer, because the latter is water-based and the ink can still smear if the pages get wet, which would be a disaster.

Regards,
Josephine

[nicdigby]

I'm afraid if I were you, I'd suggest to family:
"Right, I've done it the hard bit now. If you want copies, get on and organise / pay for the printing between you all!"
At least that'd avoid the sad result of paying for it all, then seeing people suddenly don't want a copy / to contribute to the cost of it, or that they can't be bothered to read it.
People value more what they have had to pay for.
TY

Never gonna work 

[nicdigby]

Would a local print shop be willing to bind something into a book format after you've printed and assembled it?

I've seen family history books that were assembled using cerlox / comb binding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comb_binding

If you only used colour printing for the photos, etc., that would cut down on the cost of printing it yourself. You could use a word processing program such as Word for the text and something more suitable for the graphics (most computers have some sort of basic photo editing program). (In my experience, importing photos into a Word document is a mistake, because they look terrible when they're printed.)

As for the covers, you could make/supply your own. You can buy book board / chipboard. Here's one example: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Cinch-Book-Board-8-5-x-11-2pk-Gray-Chipboard/36489750. I'm sure there are a lot of options at craft/hobby stores and online at Amazon.

You can also repurpose book covers by taking apart old books that you've purchased at a charity shop or from the library discards table. You could use paper or fabric to cover them. Here's an example: https://compassandink.com/how-to-make-a-fabric-cover-junk-journal/. That would take a lot more time and work, though.

I understand the need to keep costs as low as possible. I think it would be fair to price out everything in advance and ask your various family members to pay for the cost of printing and assembling the books; I'm sure they would agree that it's only fair, after you've done all the work of researching, writing, etc. It's not reasonable to expect you to bear the entire cost.

Regards,
Josephine

Some good ideas in here, thank you. Interesting that you mention that photos look poor in Word. I wonder how I can do this? 

[nicdigby]

You could also try to lower the page count by experimenting with the font(s) and font size(s) that you use. For example, just bringing the font size down from 12 to 11 will make a difference. And some fonts take up less space than others.

You could copy your document (if it's in Word, for example) and use the copy to experiment. That way you won't mess up the formatting in your good copy.

Most books that you buy include information on the font(s) and font sizes used, so you could check out what's been used in any books you have at home for ideas.

Regards,
Josephine

Good ideas here, thank you. Will experiment.

[Josephine]

Some good ideas in here, thank you. Interesting that you mention that photos look poor in Word. I wonder how I can do this? 

You're most welcome, nicdigby.

You could print specific pages in your Word document and see how they look using your printer. They might look just fine for your purposes (meaning, perhaps the issue had more to do with my printer).

Here is something I haven't tried, but you could try it and see how it works. You could convert your Word document (containing photos, etc.) to a .pdf and print out just a few pages of the .pdf to see how they look: for example, a page with a map, another page with a photo, a page with text, etc.

If you are printing and assembling the book at home, and just using a print shop to bind it, then you don't have to print all the pages at once. You could print the text on regular printer paper in black and white, and then you could print the pages with images on slightly nicer paper in colour, and you could insert the colour pages in the right places. (Think of older, more expensive books with tip-ins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped-in_page.)

You'd need to use some kind of photo program for the photos and graphics, if you are doing them separately. I use a Mac at home and the program that comes with the Mac works well. I hate the program that comes with most PCs. You could also try using the less expensive version of Photoshop (Photoshop Elements) to edit and print your photos and graphics (if you don't already have a copy of the full Photoshop).

Another option would be to have a print shop only print out your photos, maps, etc., which you would then put into the right spots within your book before having it bound/cerloxed/whatever. You could load the image files onto a memory stick and the print shop could print them, or you could bring in hard copies of images that they could photocopy in colour.

Regards,
Josephine