Fun with Print-on-Demand, recreationally speaking

A week ago, I spent the entire weekend writing and illustrating a short children's book for my library media class. It was one of those times where a great idea occurs to you almost too late, and you have to rush to make it happen. In short, my instructor was going to Guatemala (leaving on Friday the 13th) for a literacy conference, and had mentioned to our class that the schools in Guatemala have very few books. Therefore, she was taking with her as many books in Spanish as she could carry in her suitcase. Since we are required to complete a creative project for that class, I decided to make a book to be translated to Spanish by my friend who is a native speaker.

Because the schools in Guatemala have no climate control, my teacher advised that if we were to find any books to donate, they needed to be hard backed. That's when I knew I'd have to find a printing service to print my book, and so I looked into the options through an online company called Blurb (http://www.blurb.com/). They have a free software program called Booksmart that you can download on your computer, and then you can upload your scanned images into the file to create your own book.

The software was easy to download and incredibly easy to use. I am confident that a child could use it. And the finished products are pleasing--I spent some time perusing some of the other children's books that other people created. Blurb even has a feature to set your own price, so that you can mark up your book and make a profit. I did not choose to utilize this feature, as I made this book for a specific purpose and felt that it had limited marketability. But for those who choose to market their creations, the site provides a number of avenues, including starting a blog through blurb's website, linking to social networking sites, and using Google tools.

This was a unique experience for me. When I discussed it with my teacher, and worried about if finished product would be good enough, she said to me, "Just do your best. In a school that doesn't have enough books, the difference between something and nothing is a lot." That changed my perspective. So then, for me, the appeal of this assignment was that I did not have to feel the pressure of creating a saleable product. My focus was entirely upon creating a simple book with an easy storyline and interesting pictures. For the purpose of that assignment, once the finished product was done, so was my work, as the marketing aspect was completely removed.

On a side note, the other missing piece was editing. Of course, I had my friend's translation edited by a Spanish professor for grammatical accuracy, but no one edited the content. Since I was using the story of the three pigs, it was not really necessary, but I still felt the void. I feel that editing by a third party is an important and crucial step for every piece of writing, and regardless of a story's simplicity, it will never be as good as it could be without the input of a good editor. Looking at the other people's work, I could also recognize the creativity that had not been fine-tuned, and the resulting rawness that these books exhibited. That is why I feel a strong attraction to becoming an editor.

As another experiment, I am considering creating another simple project, perhaps one more heavily laden with photos/imagery rather than writing, and putting it on the Blurb's website just to play with the marketing aspects.

Anybody have any ideas for a generic and simple, image-focused book I could create for this purpose?