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? asked in Arts & HumanitiesBooks & Authors · 8 years ago

Way to print individual hard cover book?

My chemistry teacher is retiring at the end of this year, and he is universally loved by all of his students and the other members of the faculty. As such, I am trying to organize a going away present in the form of a scrapbook. I was looking at shutterfly.com, but I also want to be able to include pages of quotes from all of his past students expressing their thanks. I also want there to be a few long articles, that might take several pages. Unfortunately, shutterfly is very limited in this regard.

My hope is that the book turns out to be around 70-80 pages, and is hopefully pretty thick. I only want 1 or 2 copies of the book, because it is just for him.

So, how would I go about organizing such a present? Gathering everything to put into the book is easy enough, but what program would I use to design the layout, page organization, etc.? Furthermore, is there a website I could print this book on? And if not, is there a printer in the Los Angeles area who would print a single copy of a hard back book?

Please help me, as I really want to make this the best going away present ever!

--Daniel (Class of 2014)

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  • 8 years ago
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    Lulu.com would be a good place to start for printing. You have complete control over the layout of every page. Createspace.com is their main competitor, but I don't think they do hardcovers. If you need colour for the interior, it can be expensive, because they have to allow for the possibility of every page having colour, but for one or two copies, it shouldn't be too bad.

    For layout, if you want it to look like a "proper" book, mostly text with the occasional picture or photograph, you can use Microsoft Word or OpenOffice - Lulu provide suitable templates. If you want it to look more like a scrapbook, with borders around pieces of text that are pasted in at odd angles, you might want to use a desktop publishing program, such as Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Publisher. There's bound to be someone among the staff or current or former students who's a wizard with it. You could probably persuade one of the art teachers to do it, or get one or more of their students to do it. Keeping it a secret from the chemistry teacher might be tricky...

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