Create your own coffee table book
from Good Thinking (418 articles)
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Image Gallery ( 18 images )May 4, 2005 A new web-based service that offers personalised single-copy high-quality coffee-table books could give the humble book a new life in the digital age. Books have been the principle medium of knowledge distribution for five hundred years until the coming of the internet and the digital distribution of words, sound, images and video. With the arrival of the Digital Age, the book has lost some of its allure, being seen as low-tech in a high-tech age although it remains the most user-friendly of all mediums. In offering everybody the ability to produce a one-off or very-short-run book of premium quality at a cost-effective price, Australian-based Momento has redefined the short-run book publishing market and opened up myriad new and exciting publishing opportunities. Already the service is being used by companies, photographers and artists as short-run portfolios, as special “this is your life”gifts for loved ones and retiring employees, baby books and the overwhelming favourite … wedding albums. The coming launch of the service to professionals will also enable photographers and communications companies to offer sizes up to A3, leather binding … and professional value-added services.
Having a book published is still one of the great dreams of the modern age. Most aspiring, working or retired creatives have at least one book under the bed and there are equally as many people who would appreciate having their life’s work captured within the pages of one volume, regardless of their field of endeavour.
Now it’s possible to fulfil that dream, and whatsmore, you can do it for under US$100 – Momento pricing is loosely based on AUD$80 plus AUD$1.00 a page. So a 100 page book, will cost AUD$180 (approx US$140) and a 150 page book (which is the maximum size available through the web-based system), will cost AUD$230 (US$180). There are also discounts available for two (5%), five (10%), ten (15%), 50 (20%) and 100 (25%) orders of the same book. You can also order a protective cover sleeve for the book printed to your own design for a further AUD$25 each.
The books can be created in four different sizes via Momento’s web site and free software package (A4 landscape, A4 square, A5 landscape and A5 square) and nine sizes are available through professional resellers (A3, A4 and A5 with portrait, landscape and square formats in each size).
For those not familiar with printing terms, those sizes are A3 (297 x 420 mm), A4 (210 x 297 mm) and A5 (148 x 210 mm) with square versions having the greater dimension and every book is hand stitched and bound with a hard linen cover and comes in a protective cover sleeve of your own design.
The Momento service came from the creative partnership of two of Australia’s best-known multimedia identities.
“Momento stemmed from me being an advanced amateur photographer and technology lover wanting a better format for presenting my many photos beyond just handing around a bunch of six by fours in an envelope,” said Momento co-founder Geoff Hunt.
“Digital photography has completely reinvented every single aspect of the photographic experience except one – there has to be something better than an envelope full of six by fours.”
The other co-founder of Momento and Geoff's life partner, is Libby Jeffery, who at the time of conceptualisation, was the NSW President of the Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Association.
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