All my photos are now in the cloud and presumably safe but the hours of work I've put into these books are still vulnerable.

iCloud Photo Library stores your photos, but not the projects.  Make a backup copy of your Photos Library on an external drive.

See this Help page:                 Back up your Photos library      

Back up your Photos library

Even if you use iCloud Photo Library, it’s important that you always back up your library locally using one of the following methods:

• Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. If you ever lose the files in your Photos library, you can restore them from the Time Machine backup. For more information about setting up Time Machine, open Time Machine in the Applications folder, then look in the Help menu.
• Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.

If you have more than one photo library, be sure to back them all up.

Important: If any of your image files are stored outside your photo library, those files (known as referenced files) aren’t backed up when you back up your library. Be sure to back up these files separately. To make it easier to back up all your image files at once, you can consolidate referenced files into your library. For more information, see Change where Photos stores your files.

Project do not load to iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Photo Library is not a backup - you need a local backup which is why Apple supplies TimeMachine with all Macs

Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac - Apple Support

iCloud Photo Library FAQ - Apple Support

Do I need a Backup?

iCloud Photo Library stores all of your original photos and videos in iCloud, but we always recommend you keep back up copies of your Library. You can download your photos and videos from iCloud to your computer and store them as a separate library, transfer them to your computer with iTunes, or store them on a separate drive.

LN

thanks for the advice and yes I am fully aware that a physical backup is imporrant, I have two.

But with 13 years worth of raw photos and video its a lot of backup which started in the days before you could get terror bite drives on the high street.

IVe already lost three hard drives which failed me.

I dont think Apple fully appreciate how much data we're collecting. To store all your video, music, movies, photos, documents on an iMac is simply imposible in the days before the cloud.

SO all librarie are point to bigger external drives that then backup to other drives which means the whole thing is very slow and often fails.

BESIDES... I would like to continue working on my books away from my desk. Photo book data being saved to the cloud would not be heard and very useful.

I've got the same problem, my iMac's hard drive is on the way out, some times it doesn't start up, some times it does. I'd like to just drag my book project to a memory stick or preferably back it up on my iCloud account which I'm paying for. I guess as I have a copy of the photos album file, on an external drive, that's backed up the book projects as well. Would still like the security of it being on a cloud backup. Seems like there's still a bit of joined up thinking required at Apple.

Wish Apple would invent drives that are raid hard or solid state drives in one enclosure, so if one of the drives fails, you always have a chance to recover data from the second drive.

Same problem? Same answer

LN

I've got the same problem, my iMac's hard drive is on the way out, some times it doesn't start up, some times it does. I'd like to just drag my book project to a memory stick or preferably back it up on my iCloud account which I'm paying for.

Create your book projects in a small, separate Photos Library. Then you can easily copy the separate library to an external drive to backup the book.

But remember, that iCloud Photo Library is not a backup as Larry pointed out earlier in this discussion. iCloud Photo Library is the central working storage of your library that will sync to all devices. You can restore the library (without the face s and the projects) from iCloud, if your drive should fail. But you cannot revert to a previous version if you make any user error - delete accidentally too many photos or batch change all titles or similar blunder.  Then you need a separate backup to restore the library.  iCloud does not protect you from user errors.