Some ideas and tips for homemade books:
- A cover and a few pages of text or photos may be all you need. If you want to create something lengthier such as a story book, learn about the typical parts of a book. Your book doesn't have to have all these parts. Pick and choose what works for you.
- Publish a family history book. If you don't have time or aren't inclined to do a lot of research, you could create a book just for your immediate family that includes a small family tree, a few photos, and mini-biographies of each included family member.
- Scrapbooks and photo albums come in all shapes and sizes. Crunched for time? Create a mini-book of just a few pages focused on a specific event such as your last vacation or a birthday or just a collection of your own digital photography that you want to share with friends. Add captions or a few appropriate quotations and you're done.
- Type up familiar fairy tales in your own words -- just as if you were telling a bedtime story to your kids or grandkids. Put the recipient into the story too. Add your own photos or some public domain images from the Web and you've got a very special book.
- Typeset free books from Project Gutenberg, adding your own or public domain illustrations and give as printed books to a family member or friend.
- Bind your book using whatever method works best for you. From inserting into a three-ring binder to trying your hand at perfect binding there are many ways to bind your book.
You can design your special keepsake book entirely on the computer with desktop publishing software or digital scrapbooking software for Windows or Mac. For most book projects, graphics software may not be the best choice although you may want to use it to design the cover of your book.
Browse this collection of Book Design Tutorials.
