With today’s consumer-grade technologies advancing to such an extent as to rival their high-end (i.e. unaffordable) professional equivalents, we average Joes and Janes have the capability to produce pretty much any media we want. Digital cameras, with their automatic face detection, motion capturing, red-eye reducing, colour correcting functions can make anyone’s snapshot into an award winning photo. Ok, that’s a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea. Software likewise is enabling the average consumer to Photoshop and video edit like a pro (or to think so anyway).

It should therefore come as no surprise that you can even publish your own bookstore-quality softcover! With $12.95, you can build a truly jaw-dropping coffee table book that will make your party guests do a double take when they can’t believe they see your name printed on its cover. We’re talking about stylized, well layed out, customizable works of art here people. That’s what you can do on Blurb.com. A couple of friends sent me this link (thanks Marina & Angela!) and it just blew me away. Imagine surprising your mother with a breathtaking art book of her paintings…or building a slick and glossy photo book of your two-year old tyrants that will knock their grandparents’ teeth out…or the ultimate wedding book that would put Martha Stewart’s scrapbooks to shame. Think business books, portfolios, children’s books…oh, the possibilities.

And it’s simple to boot! You just download the FREE Blurb BookSmart bookmaking software (works on both Mac and PC), follow the instructions to add photos, artwork, and text…and when you’re satisfied with your creative output, just place the order for the book online. You even have the option of putting your book in the Blurb Bookstore for sale to anyone willing to pay your assigned price (yes, you keep 100% of the markup and no, if you don’t make your book public, no one will have access to it or its contents – your book is copyrighted and that copyright belongs to you).

Click here to watch a step-by-step guide to creating your book.

I know what you’re thinking: “This is too good a deal to be true” right? I hear ya. Well, according to Angela (yes I’m Angela too – it gets confusing so henceforth she shall be “Angie”), the layout program is “ok.” BookSmart is relatively user friendly but she does get stuck once in a while. You are unfortunately constrained to the templates that you select and you can’t move your elements outside of their designated boundaries.

The most important component that you’ll need is high resolution images. If you need to stretch out your picture, it’s much too small and your project will “error” like mad. You also have to accept the text size that’s predetermined, which could be an annoyance.

But think about it folks. Where else are you gonna be able to publish your very own book, soft- or hard-covered, small or large, in full print shop colours, on bookstore quality paper, and with your name on it! For all that, you have to be willing to let go of some anal details. This is perfect for someone who doesn’t quite have the eye for layouts and prefers to follow directions, yet is still able to retain that spark of originality. Those designers out there looking for a very specific look (or font size) might be out of luck but for the rest of us, this is as good as it gets.

Here are some ideas to inspire you: