Someone in the comments also mentioned Affinity Publisher as a cheap alternative for desktop publishing that may be easier to use than Scribus. I actually would recommend that over Python + Reportlab for anything a little complex to layout. It is kind of like Adobe InDesign (but free) and it is quite easy to develop extensions in Python to automate parts of the workflow (I have written some for my second book here). I am planning some other book projects I care about more and this allowed me to see if it was worth it putting in the effort.Įdit September 2020: Since writing this, I have published 3 more books: Instead of using Python code and Reportlab to format the book like mentioned here, I used Scribus, an open source desktop publishing software (version 1.4 for the first book and version 1.5 for the second Version 1.5 is still in beta and is a bit buggy but has better handling for font embedding, useful for the print replica). I kept it simple since I was mostly interested in checking out how a Print-On-Demand color book would turn out and also test if Reportlab / Python could be used as a suitable replacement for Latex (which I used in my previous books) for the book layout. The book is nominally in French, however, apart from the title, there is no text in French in the book: The content is basically only photos, along with the geographic coordinates of where it was taken. Here are the product pages on Amazon: US, FR, UK, DE, JP. It is a Print-On-Demand color photo book titled “Croix de Savoie” ( Crosses of Savoie). Recently, I published a new book through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

Amazon photo books