Self-Publishing a Book with Photos – Color or Black & White? #Journey #SelfPublishing

Any “self-publishers” out there? I have self-published seven books of poetry, mostly chapbooks and shorter collections of poems and I believe some of the appeal and draw of the poems I publish here on my site are the beautiful and sometimes striking images that I share alongside my poems.

Most of my pictures are shared under a “creative commons” license, where the artist/photographer shares the photo relinquishing copyrights to it for others to share or use to create their own creative works using the photo in whole or in part, including for commercial uses.

Oftentimes, I scour sites like Unsplash, PxHere, Pexels, Pixabay among others to find a visual that communicates my poetry in a way similar to the feeling of the words. While it’s not required, due to the type of license, I try to attribute the artist who created the work, as well as the source hosting the photo.

Self-publishing on Amazon I have usually utilized Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to create a Kindle-compatible eBook and their on-demand printing services for selling paperback copies of my books. The problem is that adding pictures to these eBooks and paperbacks is not easy to do, nor is it a feasible option. I feel like even if I was able to use KDP to create a book that contained the photos I wanted to use, I wouldn’t really be able to do the photo justice in the way it would come out.

My guess is that the price of a book containing photos would cost more money. I am not sure if or how some eBook version containing pictures might look. There is also the possibility of selling different versions, some with pictures, some without, some hard cover, some paperback. The possibilities are endless!

Okay, so here is my question to fellow self-publishers (please share your thoughts in the comments below):

– What service do you use for self-publishing?

– Does your service have good resources for printing photos at a high resolution and possibly even in color at a reasonable price?

Now a question for everyone:

Thank you for indulging me 😁

Your feedback is invaluable to me! 💙💜💛💚

– Jason

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One comment

  1. Hi Jason, I self-published my poetry book “Spaces between the Pause” on Amazon Books. I haven’t yet put it on Kindle. I put photos that I had taken over the years onto the page. I cut and pasted my photos beneath the poems. I did this in my word document. The photos were in color but when published they came out black and white which was actually quite nice. There wasn’t any additional cost for the photos to be included.
    No one has bought “Spaces between the Pause” yet, but hopefully someone will eventually. I just haven’t promoted it like I should, except here on WordPress.

    Liked by 1 person

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