Photobooks - questions

[Harkins]

Like many I expect, I have thousands of photos stored, in my case on remote hard drives and organised/processed in Lightroom. Out of those thousands, the ones I find that are miraculously in frame and in focus I process and upload to my Flickr account, and that's where I periodically go and look through them.

However, I really enjoy looking through my book collection and perhaps my favourite books are Tim Shia's series of Airshows in Action books from the 1980's. My favourite period, partly thanks to those books.

So I was thinking of making one of those photobooks with my photos in the style of Tim's books. My questions are, has anybody else had photobooks made and can they recommend a particular company and does anyone have any particular advice about making one? Soft or hardback? Single image per page landscape, or more bookshelf friendly portrait with smaller two images per page? Do you caption your photos?

Tim's books had about 80 pages each, and to more or less replicate that, I need to chose about 3.7% of my images uploaded to Flickr. I already think that will be quite a challenge. Do I select my 'best' 80 photos or do I try and get a more even spread of types, particularly the rarer or more interesting types, even if that means a few of my not so good images sneaking in?

[Nighthawke]

My wife always uses Photobox - I wouldn't know where to start as it involves design - not my forte! Not for aircraft but for holiday memories. Worth waiting until they have a sale on for price reductions. The finished products are great to look back on.

[Sparts99]

I've been thinkiong the same about my music photography, any advice greatfully received.

[atech]

I use vista print

Download their free book making software and away you go. Very easy to use and multiple formats and styles.

You can have between 20 to 120 pages, add text, captions, borders background and so on, the choice is all yours

Delivery normally about 2-3 weeks after uploading

Atech

[SW Sky Blue]

I use Photobox......quick, easy to navigate and if you wait for their special offers, they can be incredibly good value....Had a misprint on one book one time but they reprinted it no problem straight away...cant fault them.

[Harkins]

Thanks for the replies. I'll have a play with a couple, starting with the two suggested and see how I find them.