The book and zine making thread

Ed Sutton said:
If you mean the PDF from Mixam, I've checked one of my zines which is full colour and the Mixam PDF for 66 pages and file size is 43mb.
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Thanks, that's reassuring. Obviously there's some clever compression going on. I did wonder if it would have been better to upload individual pages, and the site would find them easier to manage.
 
Harlequin565 said:
Can't help with the file size question, but that looks like a nice Zine Toni.
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It's been a learning experience. My initial version was all mono, set into seasons. Got the wife to evaluate it, and she couldn't see a difference summer to winter, plus felt it was too many pictures. This breaks things up with the mix and has a different flow that's hopefully easier and more natural. I paid attention to putting images together on opposite pages.
 
My last zine PDF, full colour, A5, 24 pages plus cover came in at 55.6Mb.

I'll put my hands up and admit to having very little idea what I'm doing at a technical level though. I just dragged the images into Affinity Publisher and resized them there. I was using full resolution photos for this which might have had an impact on the PDF?
 
FishyFish said:
My last zine PDF, full colour, A5, 24 pages plus cover came in at 55.6Mb.

I'll put my hands up and admit to having very little idea what I'm doing at a technical level though. I just dragged the images into Affinity Publisher and resized them there. I was using full resolution photos for this which might have had an impact on the PDF?
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Mine were already 300ppi at A4, so probably quite a bit smaller, plus publisher may use less compression.
 
Intriguing how varied the file sizes come out.

My last one was submitted as a full colour PDF, designed in Affinity Publisher, A5, 20 pages + 4 pages for cover coming in at 22Mb.

There was quite a bit of white border around many of the images though.
 
I thought that I would post on my limited experience of producing a zine/booklet with Affinity Publisher and Mixam printing.

I made one last year and I have produced 2 this year, one A4 and one A5 of my grandchildren's grassroots football teams' seasons.
I am the 'unofficial' photographer of home matches and usually publish on the club's facebook page but I believe in printing photos and the zine format is a cheap and efficient way of producing what I hope is a memento for them.

I have found the whole process relatively straightforward once i got the hang of the software.
Mixam service has been top-notch (they were happy to computer chat with me to explain the impact pf the 'bleed' and even did some auto adjustments for me) and the finshed product is excellent. I would recommend them wholeheartedly.

The football is an easy topic for me and if I ever get the inspiration for a theme for a zine then at least I have some knowledge of the publishing angle.


CN Football (1 of 1).jpg
 
Guys I'm looking for some help on this: I have become editor of a hobby journal for radio enthusiasts, which involves producing a monthly publication of between 30 and 48 pages including covers. Compiling and writing copy is not a problem, but production has me a bit outside my comfort zone. I think we are going to use Mixam for printing circa 70 copies, the rest going by email so no issues with them. Mixam have a downloadable pdf template showing their bleed and quiet areas on each page. How do I use that template? Do I just ensure that the marginds on my draft are at least as wide as the total in that template?
As it's mainly text with some illustrations, I have currently got my draft in MS Word and of course can export from there as pdf to upload to Mixam.
Is it as simple as that? The cover outer and inner pages are just the first two pages in my Word document.
I'd really appreciate some words of experience please? Then one of these days I'd love to join in the zine exchange if I can put together a suitably themed collection of images.

Thanks
 
lindsay said:
Guys I'm looking for some help on this: I have become editor of a hobby journal for radio enthusiasts, which involves producing a monthly publication of between 30 and 48 pages including covers. Compiling and writing copy is not a problem, but production has me a bit outside my comfort zone. I think we are going to use Mixam for printing circa 70 copies, the rest going by email so no issues with them. Mixam have a downloadable pdf template showing their bleed and quiet areas on each page. How do I use that template? Do I just ensure that the marginds on my draft are at least as wide as the total in that template?
As it's mainly text with some illustrations, I have currently got my draft in MS Word and of course can export from there as pdf to upload to Mixam.
Is it as simple as that? The cover outer and inner pages are just the first two pages in my Word document.
I'd really appreciate some words of experience please? Then one of these days I'd love to join in the zine exchange if I can put together a suitably themed collection of images.

Thanks
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If it’s B+W then you can do it in Wird, however if there is any colour then you need to export using a package that supports CMYK colour - Mixam have a profile reference on their site, I can look it up tomorrow and post in this thread
 
Affinity Publisher does everything you need @lindsay, as David says above you need to export CMYK for colour printing or else the colours are all over the place and publisher lets you set up the margins, etc. properly
 
If it's all black and white with a colour cover check Doxdirect for pricing. They're less fussy on colour spaces and bleeds in my experience. Pretty much whatever would come out of your desktop A4 printer from a Word/OpenOffice document is what their print will look like. I've done zines with them using OpenOffice exported PDFs before I got Affinity Publisher.
 
Thanks @sirch and @Mr Perceptive . I'll install Affinity Publisher as it's an ongoing thing and may well go colour once I get established with the job.
Thanks too @Ed Sutton for the tip if we stay B&W.
Just to clarify though - I don't need to use the Mixam-supplied pdf template except as info for the margin widths?
 
Thanks guys. Much appreciated.
 
BTW when you upload to Mixam it does reasonable job of checking things like dimentions and gives you a preview before you order so you get chance to fix things
 
Late to the party, but I never check margins these days. Any text I keep well away and photos I also either keep well away, or run right to the edge knowing I'll lose a bit in the trim.

If it's a simple pdf you've done in word, it should upload to Mixam. They have a preview button so you can see how each page will look. I usually make a cock up somewhere and have to re-pdf and upload it, but having the preview makes reviewing what you'll get quite straightforward. If you're doing this regularly, you'll very quickly get into the swing of it. The first one might not be perfect, but subsequent ones will improve as you learn.
 
Thanks again, it sounds like I may not need Affinity Publisher then, but I might get the Affinity whole package anyway as I need to do other stuff of that sort occasionally now.
 
When starting out with producing a photobook, using Affinity Publisher, I found this youtube video helpful........

www.youtube.com

Designing a Photo Book in Affinity Publisher

*** CLICKABLE INDEX BELOW ***Design elegant Photo Books in Affinity Publisher ... all you need to know to quickly and easily create a great Photo Book for yo...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

There many more possibly useful ones on this channel. I noticed, but not watched, this one.....

www.youtube.com

Design a Church Newsletter in Affinity Publisher

How to design a church newsletter using Affinity Publisher. ⏰ TIMINGS 00:00:00 - Welcome00:01:54 - Introduction00:05:17 - Pre-production Considerations00:0...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
After Mixam's recent bad reviews I thought I'd post my latest experience.

I ordered a single copy of my latest sheep related nonsense to make sure all was well. Mixam quickly emailed me to ask if it was a test printing. I replied that it was. The box that arrived today felt heavy for a single copy, even at 80 pages plus cover. Pleasantly surprised to find three copies enclosed. (y)

_7513631.jpg
 
Ed Sutton said:
After Mixam's recent bad reviews I thought I'd post my latest experience.

I ordered a single copy of my latest sheep related nonsense to make sure all was well. Mixam quickly emailed me to ask if it was a test printing. I replied that it was. The box that arrived today felt heavy for a single copy, even at 80 pages plus cover. Pleasantly surprised to find three copies enclosed. (y)

View attachment 410537
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I got a batch of 20 on January 9th, and sold the last one yesterday. Might even have to order some more. :)

The next perfect bound book I do I'll make sure I leave more space at the centre where the pages meet. It doesn't matter with saddle stitching as that opens out flat. Another lesson learned.
 
toohuge said:
Dipping my toe into this area....

My affinity pdf files circa. 60 pages of A4 are coming in circa. 185mb.... is that nuts or expected!?
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I'm not sure, I don't check file sizes.

Edit. Checked a 50+ page A4 PDF and it's 94.5MB. It's not all photos on every page though.
 
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jerry12953 said:
Well, it's been such a long time since I contributed to this thread, and things have moved on a long way since then. In November I noticed an ad on Facebook from a company called Saal who produce photobooks; I think they're German so possibly trying to break into the UK market......

Anyway they were offering £100 towards one of their top-of-the range photobooks. I signed up straight away - it was valid for 30 days. I must say it was the most fun I had had in photography for a long time. The finished product took about ten days to arrive and I'm pretty pleased with it. There are a few things I would change, for example the font I used for the captions was far too large, and I didn't think to add a couple of blank pages at front and back so you open the cover and you're straight in to the content. It has fifty six pages so about 50 images, given that there a couple of double page spreads, a very professional looking "linen-feel" cover and really thick paper. In fact the paper is really too thick, perhaps more suitable for a cover rather than an inner page. And the best thing about it.....it cost me £18.23!

And it doesn't end there. You compile the book in their online software and when it came to the outer cover I added the title in white and my name in black. Both stood out well on the grey cover in their software and on-screen, but when the finished product arrived I discovered that my name was virtually invisible unless you look at the cover at a very precise angle to the light. So although I gave them good feedback I contacted them about this and as a result they gave me a full refund on what I'd paid plus the £100 which I hadn't paid! I can only imagine they didn't realise I'd had a £100 voucher. So that is all just sitting in the bank waiting until i want to produce another photo-book or reprint this one with corrections.

So I'm definitely quids in! :LOL:
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They must be still trying to get into the market then as I've just recently also taken advantage of that offer.

I've not made a photobook in ages. When my daughter was growing up, I used to do several every year to send to my parents and my wife's parents. But that fizzled out when she was about 14-15 or so.

At that time, I'd been using Photobox for everything, but then I saw the Saal offer.

I'd say the final Saal book is easily the best quality version I've got. using photographic paper rather than mat/silk and the quality of reproduction is vastly improved.

My final project was £130, but with the discount, just £30.

I don't think the layout system was brilliant. Where I preferred photobox over Saal was that you could choose a different layout for each single page, whereas the Saal one only gave you options for the spread. Of course, with both, you can move the pics around and add others, but this is where I found it annoying was when you move something, ensuring that it lines up perfectly with other images.

All in all, I was very impressed.

In the past, I'd I've wanted to create anything specific/complicated, I've created a collage of images in photoshop then exported it as a spread to be uploaded as one image - if that makes sense.
 
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