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Using Google Photos and Google Docs To Make My Webcomic Book

image of several webcomic strips

I came up with a way to use Google docs and Google photos to make my webcomic books

So whenever I draw my webcomics, the drawing program I use on my tablet saves them in a folder. I have Google Photos set up to back that folder up online. 

At first, I just wanted to have them backed up there so I could have that "year ago today thing" where it would just show me my own comic from the past year in the app. 

You know, so I could go, "oh I remember that happened this day".

That was the original reason that I did this.

Backing them up in Google Photos was a happy accident later on

In my first book, I just used Google docs to put it together. I downloaded the book template from Amazon KDP and uploaded it to Google docs so it would have the right format.

Then I just needed to add the comics.

I added webcomics the hard way in the first book

When I did the first book I thought this was genius!

I figured out google docs lets me add images by URL and I had been posting them on my website.

screenshot of a web page with a comic illustration

So what I did originally was I would go comic by comic by comic over the period of months on my website and I would copy the image URL. Then I would go to the Google doc and then I would paste that image in there.

screenshot of google docs pop up window

But by the time I added the last month of webcomics to the document it occurred to me this was not the quickest way to do it. So... not so genius.

Then I figured out the easier way. My happy accident

Then after I realized that I was also backing them up on Google photos - when I clicked on the dropdown for the add URL, it also said "photos".

screenshot of google docs dropdown menu

At the time I wasn't organizing my webcomic in Google photos in a way that I could just scroll through and add them by month.

So what I started doing is, when I backed up the webcomics that I drew each day to Google photos I would then put them in a folder for the month. 

I named the folder with the month and year like January 2020 and so on for the year. 

I do that each night after I draw the comic and now when I put the books together, it makes it super easy! 

I open the template in Google docs for the book and click to add from "photos" then open each month's folders and add them.

Screenshot of google docs

It's one of the easiest ways that I found over the years to put the book together for me.

Check out the video

I made a video talking more about this and making my webcomic book. You can check that out on the site here! Making a book of my webcomic - Part 1


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