self-publishing coffee table-style book

I've already successfully self-published an academic textbook. I'm now
thinking of turning my attention to a far different project .. that of a
coffee table format book with lots of high quality images and line
drawings and relatively sparse text. The most important difference, as
I see it, is that layout and design would play a far more important role
in the new project than it did with the first. I expect that I would
want some professional help with these issues. Can anyone suggest how
to find such help at a reasonable cost?

The alternative would be to sell the book concept to a commercial
publisher and let them worry about design. But I'm a bit of a control
freak, and I like the idea of avoiding middlemen wherever possible,
especially since the book will be targeted to a well-identified niche
market. But maybe I'd be in over my head on this one.

Thanks.

- Grant

Grant wrote:

 > I've already successfully self-published an academic textbook. I'm now
 > thinking of turning my attention to a far different project .. that of a
 > coffee table format book with lots of high quality images and line
 > drawings and relatively sparse text. The most important difference, as
 > I see it, is that layout and design would play a far more important role
 > in the new project than it did with the first. I expect that I would
 > want some professional help with these issues. Can anyone suggest how
 > to find such help at a reasonable cost?
 >
 > The alternative would be to sell the book concept to a commercial
 > publisher and let them worry about design. But I'm a bit of a control
 > freak, and I like the idea of avoiding middlemen wherever possible,
 > especially since the book will be targeted to a well-identified niche
 > market. But maybe I'd be in over my head on this one.
 >
 > Thanks.
 >
 > - Grant
As I just suggested elsewhere, look into Scribus, an Open Source program
that rivals Quakr, and runs from a Knoppix cdr disk or natively on Linux.
--
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->