Inktober 2015 Book | First Published Collection
Already a month away from Inktober, and I haven’t been too involved in the social media department at all. There is good reason for that though. During this month, I have been working on assembling my Inktober work into a printable book format. My first publicly published collection of my artwork.
As many of you already know, I work primarily digitally. My paintings, sketches, inks, everything, all digital. This obviously has it’s benefits, but it also has some big cons that come with the convenience. The first and the most nagging for me is the fact that I don’t have a physical copy of my artwork for preservation, and for sharing with others. I have done prints before with a normal inkjet/toner printer, or through a printer like Inkleys, Walmart, or Costco. These options work, but these printers don’t really tailor to the visual artist, and, as a result, prints come out lackluster, and in some case, I don’t have the option to compile multiple images into book format. It also feels like a “You get what you pay for.” situation.
I set out to find a on-demand printer who tailors to printing pictures/artwork. After looking at popular self publishing websites, like Lulu and Amazon, I discovered that most on-demand printers are tailored to writers, with some options for artists. I then stumbled onto Blurb.
I decided to take my chance with them, as their store included a ton of content that other independent artists have produced, and after reading quite a few positive comments about their services and final printing results. The shear number of tools available to the would-be self-publisher are abundant, with their own custom software (BookWright), In Design, or Scribus, all viable options for prepping your content. This was important to me as well because I work exclusively in open source software with my art. I used Krita for my art, Inkscape for logos, Blender for my video content, and Scribus for my book layout. Looking up specs for the book size you want is easy, along with a useful “Help” section, putting together my final book was time consuming but easy. The only downside to this experience were the limited size options for books. They don’t provide a “custom” option for size, but they cover the basic sizes well, with my book having a final size of 8″x10″ (I wished I had a taller format book to work with, as most of my work was 11×17).
Speaking of the final book, it was better than I expected. The print came out beautifully in the softcover format. The cover was a lamminated gloss, while the inside has a slight gloss. The blacks and other colors came out great.
My book is finally up for sale at Blurb and I will encourage your support by asking to purchase a physical or digital copy. If you purchase by December 11th with the promo code GIFTS30, you will get a 30% discount, which is awesome!
Softcover – $36.00 (USD)
Hardcover (Printed Cover) – $55.00 (USD)
Linen Hardcover (Printed Dust Jacket) – $58.00 (USD)
PDF (DRM Free!) – $6.99 (USD)
The book contains all 31 pieces from Inktober, bueatifully printed, along with a 15 pages of sketches and thumbnails that help illustrate my process to the final inking. Please let me know what you think of the final collection, as I am hoping to publish a few more books in the near future of some of my current work, and any feedback will be valuable. Also, if you haven’t seen my work for Inktober yet, you can view it all for free in here, or on Instagram.
A special thanks for Michael Buhler, Sarah Bailey, Trevor Rimmasch, and Isaac Christiansen for their knowledge and help polishing the final book.