Self Publishing

[Mel]

I've been playing with the idea in my head for a couple months now of creating a coffee table book that delivers powerful photography combined with good stories - and I think I've finally decided what I'm going to do. The past couple months I've been shooting my house. I live in a 110 year old Victorian in San Francisco, and my owners just took on an exterior restoration project. I took photographs before it started, climbed up on the scaffolding and got some details of the woodwork after the old paint was stripped, and I'm going to be doing after photos as well.

After finding out from my landlord a lot about the history of the house, I decided I want to do a book featuring several houses throughout the process of exterior restoration. To be able to capture the essence of what their house used to be, and the brilliance of the final result. I also want to interview the owner and find out if there is any interesting history of the building, the family that lives there, the former occupants, or any rumors or hearsay about the place as well. I think it would make for really cool story-telling combined with amazing images. I think the owners would love to have those keepsake images of their home and I thought I can also go through restoration companies to get clients - and offer them images in trade.

It's all coming together, and I am really excited. What I don't know about though is... how do you go about self publishing a book? I know how to create a coffee table style album, our print shop makes them and they are beautiful, but do I just make them through that and sell them on my website or what is the proper ways to do it? I might even look into real official publishing if I can too, but one thing at a time... any suggestions?