How To Self-Publish A Calendar And Sell It Online

Open a Lulu account, which only takes minutes, and hover over Create from the top menu , this brings up a drop down menu with Calendars as the last option. Click that and select your calendar size. The £8.99 27.94 x 21.59cm option has a nice spiral binding and is the most robust, the £7.69 stapled option can come apart after a few months hanging on your wall so it’s worth spending the extra few pence.

Now choose 12 photos, 13 if you want a different image for the cover than the interior. You donít have to resize them yourself, the Lulu wizard will help with that too, but for superior image quality and cropping use something like Photoshop to resize your photos. A spiral bound 27.94 x 21.59cm calendar image on Lulu at 300dpi works out at exactly 3300 x 2550 pixels, so crop and resize your photos to this size before uploading and you’ll get the best results.

The wizard opens up after you’ve chosen the make this book button and allows you to upload the prepared images with an easy button driven interface. Once you’re happy with the order and look of the calendar, you can add custom dates and then preview it. You’ll be asked for description, author and title fields and if you want to mark up the price so that if anyone buys it you get a cut of the money they pay. All that’s left to do now is publish it.

You have the option to place your calendar on private, invite or general release, so only you can see it, only people you give the link to can see it, or the whole world can see it. The chances of you getting rich from a calendar of your holiday snaps are slim, but if you have a theme, such as hobbies or pets, there have been cases where people have done quite well, so why not give it a go and see if that photo of Uncle Ron jetskiing becomes someone’s Mr January?

[Image via Russ Payne]