Creating A Fan Club Book

Putting together a book about your favorite star is a great project for a fan club. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Planning:

Before you start to prepare your book, you will want to spend some time planning it out. Some of the things that you will want to think about as you get going are what magnitude of star your book is based on. Is he or she a major star with worldwide recognition? A really great musical artist that (in you and your club's opinion) not enough people have heard of? These sorts of things will inform the type of book you are putting together. For the worldwide star, for instance, you will have a multitude of material to choose from, whereas for the up and comer, you may be relying on quotes and photos from fellow fans.

Gathering Your Material:

Inform your fan club of the project you are trying to put together. Seek out some opinions on how to proceed, but make sure to keep the project under your power. Ask your fellow fans to contribute stories and anecdotes, both about the star's life, and perhaps any interactions (and photos) they have had with him or her. Also take a good look around for interviews, stories, and photographs of the star both online and in magazines. If your star is a musician, you can include all of his or her album covers and some concert posters and the like as well. If the object of your fascination is a film star, you can include movie posters. The trick in this stage is to simply get as much material as you can together and you can sift things out from there until you have the right amount of great stuff.

Organize and Arrange:

Depending on the type pf material you have gathered, there are a number of different ways you can arrange your book. You can, for instance, do a chronology of the star's life, the projects he or she has been involved in, and a section containing items from his or her private live such as photos of souses and children, etc.

Arrange the book so that the photos and the text go well together and in a way that flow naturally. If you have access to a program such as Adobe InDesign or something like it (and you know how to use it) you ca create a great looking book. If not, you can still do a reasonably good job with MS Word or a similar word processing program. Just do the best you can with what you are working with, and seek help online if you hit a snag or two along the way.

Printing and Binding:

If the whole fan club has gotten into the act, see if you can get some contributions for the printing and binding. If you get no help there, you will still want to print in color if you can, and to bind the book as nicely as possible. Do a search for a thermal binding machine (the ones that can make hardcover books). They are inexpensive and easy to use, and give you the flexibility of making as many books as you want, when you want.