I'm with luxuryreplica. Absolutely follow your creative juices
The first thing I would do,
right now, is go to a book store or gift shop and look through the other books of nature photography. How do your photographs compare? If you page through the books and say "I can do this!", you're okay. If you page through the books and say "Wow, my pictures are totally better than this! How did these guys ever get published?", even better. If your photos aren't quite up to snuff, you have time to hone your skills, and that should be where you start. Those other books are going to be your competition, no matter how you get your photographs out there. I'm imagining the gift shop now..."Wow!" you think. "There's way more British Columbia photography books than I expected!" But they all have a niche.
Some thoughts, on the book thing:
Self-publishing is a fine and honorable pursuit. But.
If you self-publish, some people will assume that you're self-publishing because you just couldn't get a book deal. This alone can make self-published books a hard sell -- some people
will assume that your product is intrinsically worth less -- but there's other things at play, too. Like visibility. How are people going to know that your PDF book is out there, in the first place?
I know you said you didn't want to deal with publishers, at least not at the start. But -- after you make sure you have a bunch of great photos -- I would anyway. Herein lies the Bad News portion of our program: Most people aren't going to want coffee table PDFs. They're going to want coffee table books, big glossy pictures they can hold on their lap like a family photo album. Especially if we're talking a few years of "leg work," you're going to want a real return on that time investment, and I must admit I have my doubts that you'll get that from PDFs.
Here's the good news: Publishers don't have to be scary. Most of them are small businesses, run by people just like you, only their passion is publishing instead of taking pictures. I'd actually advise you to approach a smaller local press, because your photos are going to be of most interest to people who live in British Columbia and people who visit. British Columbia certainly has some local presses. Look at the logos on the backs of the books in the gift shop -- you'll probably find at least one company that specializes in nature photography and travel guides in just your part of the world.
More bad news. You've described your book several times as a "mix" between a tour guide and a travel journal.
I would avoid that. Those are both established genres in their own rights, but buyers like to know what they're getting. Book buyers don't typically like mixed nuts. The good news is that there's nothing preventing you from doing both separately -- you could even use the same photographs, as long as you made sure that you either kept the rights or sold both books to the same publisher (if they had the rights).
Remember the overwhelming number of photography books at our theoretical gift shop? (Ah, the downside of living in one of the most beautiful parts of the world!) They aren't all alike. Some are big, expensive, comprehensive. Some are small, cheap, giftable. Some are coffee-table sized, some are "travel-sized"...you get the idea. Some are travelogues, some are technical guides to hiking, and some are just a lot of pretty pictures. Find your niche. Don't try and be all things to all people. Maybe there's a lot of nature photography books out there, but
yours is the only one entirely devoted to shots in the rain. Or during magic hour. Or with an ecological message. Again, you can "repackage" the same photographs in different ways, provided the rights clear.
If you do choose to self-publish, there are companies like Lulu that can turn your photos into physical books, which may prove more marketable than PDFs. They typically print one book at a time, as it is ordered -- this is called print-on-demand. It's still self-publishing, so visibility will be an issue. When tourists go to Vancouver and are awed by its natural beauty, are they going to go online and order a book and have it delivered to them back home? Probably not. They'll go into a bookstore or gift shop and pay through the nose for one as a memento. Even with Lulu handling the printing and shipping, it will still be difficult to get these books into little gift shops and the like, but with persistence you
might be able to get a few to bite.
Above all, think about your motive for doing the PDF/book thing. I think wanting to raise your profile for a gig as a tour guide or photography authority is a great reason to put together a book -- many non-fiction authors write to raise their profile or to become an "authority" on something. Few things raise your profile more than a published (not self-published) book. It's all about a
platform. Include your URL in your books. Let people sign up for a mailing list there, with the promise of free pictures every now and then. Then let them all know when you start doing photography tours! And when you do, keep a guest log and do the same thing. You can plug your books to people who take your tours, and you can plug your tours to people who buy your books. It won't be long until people are including
you in their British Columbia travel guides!
As a photographer, you should be great at coming up with a creative angle to everything.
Selling a PDF book on a CD might not be the most marketable thing in the world, but you just need to reframe it. A collection of desktop/wallpaper-sized photographs, along with some MP3s from local bands just dying for exposure? Tourists would buy it
and a hard copy of the book. It'll be a little bit of nature they can have in
their cubicles.
It won't always be easy, but look at it this way: What good fortune that you live in such a beautiful part of the world, and that you have the skills and the desire to chronicle it with photographs? That
is a marketable product that people would pay money for, as is instruction in photography from a local expert (of course he's an expert! He published this book!). There
will be times when you
will have doubts that any of this will happen, but stick with it.
I'll be in for a signed copy.