Brain Dump
Jef Spaleta: Don't try to do one big book that gets as many people's photos in as possible. 300 pages is a tome. No one will want to lug something that big around. Do narrowly focused thematic books and use photos selectively to support the theme. Think small books you can slip into the bag you carry my OLPC XO in to events. Think 1 pound book or lighter.
The goal for the books isn't to be comprehensive, the goal is to tell the story of how the thematic focus is expressed in the people making up the Fedora project. We can be comprehensive about recording the faces of our contributor base by other means like a website for the photos and community bios. The books don't need to try to be that.
4 editions to start: features,folks,friends,fun. Each book tells the story of that word using a mix of text, graphics, and photos.
[Or better yet, freedom / friends / features / first ? -- PWF]
open up book layout to any small group inside Fedora for special editions. If a SIG wants a book 6 months from now as a keepsake to tell the story of their work as a team...cool. It's okay if photos get reused in these special editions from previous editions.
Brain Dump Revisited
Doug Berry: Great input keep it coming. Jef has raised some good points. Publishers charge by size and color, those are the main price kickers. So sometime soon, we need to determine the size of the first book and go with that. We can control weight by page count.
The main thing that is going to determine the cost/price ratio of our book(s), is publishing and printing. Since we are creating the manuscript that will go to the printer as an embedded PDF file, for free, our efforts will not effect the cost/price. Any price we get from a publisher will be based on size (usually what's good for them), and the number of pages. So we will need to determine those before we even start looking at pictures, or anything else.
Another important consideration is image and graphics color. The printing industry pretty much uses CMYK colors. Most inks are oil based and these colors are considered best for printing. Of course, there may be alternatives, but if not, that will mean any graphics or colored text created using RGB or other color charts will need to be updated to get the true color.
If we go with Print On Demand, most of their books seem to be 6 x 9. Many offer other sizes, but this one seems to be the most popular.
Another printing consideration is whether to use Offset (high quality images and better color) or Digital (laser) slightly lesser quality but cheaper. Another issue is paper quality: vellum, coated photographic - higher quality images; plain paper, much like that you buy for your home printer - cost next to nothing.
There are other considerations but those are the main ones that will weigh heavy on the cost/price ratio.
New Considerations
Doug Berry: I recently posted on the mailing lists, a break-down and cost comparison concerning by what means we could best publish our Picture Book. I think everyone would agree that using a Print-On-Demand (POD) Publisher would be the easiest way of going. It would, however, be the most expensive way to go. For example, Lulu $30 plus for a full color book.
Another option, several people discussed would be to bypass POD Publishers and go directly to Lightning Source, which is the printer/distributor for most POD Publishers including Lulu.
It would be necessary to establish an account as a publisher with Lightning Source and commit to publishing more than one book. Perhaps we could do a picture book for each release of Fedora. I prepared several documents detailing my thoughts on this process and what it would entail and I will post links to them here if anyone is interested. Here are the links: [1] [2]