Finally, after starting my first online book some months ago, I’ve found a day to myself to finish it – have a look! It’s a simple photo log of a short trip to Nepal that I did with Martin in 2007. Naturally I was attracted to taking snaps of the stunning scenery whilst Martin was intent on doing more paragliding in a week than he gets in a year in wet Ireland. However, its hard to put one’s interest to one side and I found myself intrigued by Nepalese community forest projects set up by the United Nations Enviroment programme. So loosely its a travel photo book with a small bit on the benefits of such forests are giving local nepalese villagers and it’s also got shots of the one time I’ve flown – I took the plunge  in a paraglider off a himalayan slope in the company of Brad, an Eygptian kite bird of prey and EU paraglider champ, Jamie Messenger. To say it was an amazing experience is a bit of an understatement (see movie below, the parahawking has led to improved conservation of these birds in the region too)

Really with this content I wanted to have fun in understanding how to make a book or art catalogue in the future and to share the idea with other creative types. I wanted to test out the online Blurb.com system, recommended to me by Krishna De at Creative Camp earlier this year. As you can see its got huge potential for all you wanna be writers and I know many times in the past I wanted to make a catalogue for my art projects but never had the funds. The good thing with this system is if you are handy dragging and dropping photos on a blog you are almost there. Then it’s a matter of adding text, uploading it and you then purchase a copy(s) and have it listed online, so if any of your friends or colleagues or new audience want it they just click to buy. You can also have a badge on your site to promote your book!

New interactive software and social media community sharing ideas have meant blurb.com (there are other print on demand companies) as a print on demand company, are becoming hugely popular.  It’s giving many writers, bloggers, poets, artists photographers, you name your interest, control and access to publishing and distributing their ideas from their own computers. So if you write a blog you might very well be creating content for such a book! Are you setting up a new gardening business or writing short stories, telling people about allotments or undertaking your best ever eco art project, if so you might consider making your very own book in the future. Do let me know about your upcoming titles 🙂