I did make some progress today. First thing was I found out that InDesign won't automatically print your book in folios / or signatures - and if you don't know what that is - forget it.
There are programs and plug-ins that you can buy for that purpose but they are either expensive or there was something about them I didn't like.
I also decided that I wasn't going to use matte paper. That was out. And it wasn't a good idea to be bending semi-gloss photo paper. So I am convinced that single sheet photo paper is the way to approach this.
I tested Canon dual-sided semi-gloss and that's just fine, though still on the expensive side. It's about a dollar per sheet at Atlex for letter size. So if your book is going to have say 20 pages - that's $20 for paper, though you could mix it with single sided etc. But as I say - prints look great, and it's just the right thickness so the pages will turn easily and you can't see the back image coming through. I did some smudge tests with it and it also seems fine. There may be another double-sided semi-gloss paper out there to test. If you want to keep it simple, you can just buy linen hinges with adhesive for each page - and put it into a post book.
But what looks most promising right now is a small binding press for perfect-binding. This means that the books will not lie flat when open - but will be more like the Aperature book, though frankly - the inkjet prints will be of a better quality.
I don't think I'm going to do the post-bound book thing because they look too much like photo albums. I want this to look like a real book. Ever so slowly - and with a couple of Tylenols - I'm getting close.
