List your Blurb or other Book

[pnodrog]

Hi all. Mike has another thread about using lightroom 5 to prepare a book for Blurb. I was wondering how many of you have a book sitting on Blurb that we can have a peek at?

I did one about a trip to Europe a few years ago using a free desktop publishing programme called Scribus. If you want to have a peek at it use this Link.

Feel free to add your own book links in this thread. It maybe useful to add how the book was prepared. (you will need to make the book public)

[Mike Buckley]

You went to a LOT of trouble to create such a pleasing book. I'm using almost exclusively one photo per page in my book and only a short caption with each photo, which takes a lot less time. You had to choose a different template for almost every page and you had to write the text. I glanced at every page in your book and it flows really well. Congratulations!

I don't plan on selling my book, as it is being designed for friends as a gift rather than for sale to the general public. However, I could easily see eventually selling a book made of my glass photos once I accumulate a sufficient portfolio of images. If you have anything about your sales that you would want to share with us, please do. If not, I and I'm sure others understand.

[pnodrog]

Hi Mike thanks for the kind remarks. The book was for family use only and I have never tried to sell it. Until I put the link in today it was marked as private viewing only.

I am sure there will be other books that CinC members have done and I just thought it might be nice to have a peek at them.

[Val Mansfield]

Go to Blurb, search for "Val Mansfield" and you will find a lot of mine.

Five more waiting to upload when Blurb offers a discount.

[tbob]

I made this book solely as a thank you some people who looked after our goats for six weeks while we were in New Zealand. I never intended it for sale and because they live here I never thought to add any text. Sort of redundant for locals

Here it is
www.blurb.ca/b/4017368-the-peace-river-district

[pnodrog]

Well Val and Trevor a bit of an eye opener as to the lurking talent on CinC. Neither of you mentioned what software was used to produce them.

Val I had a quick look at a couple of your massive collection - very impressive. Did you use the same layout software for all them?

Trevor it is a great set of photographs but because you avoided any mucking around with text I am assuming you used the Blurb software?

[Val Mansfield]

Hi Paul,

I use the BLURB program; always the latest version.

I tend to use layouts that I have developed rather than the ones built into BLURB, but getting what you want is very easy; except for putting text onto two page spreads.

Val

[Mike Buckley]

I use the BLURB program; always the latest version.

Which program -- Bookify, Booksmart or their Plug-in for InDesign?

[tbob]

I downloaded their proprietary design program when I registered on the site and set up to do the first book. If memory serves it was Booksmart.

Val: I am curious. Do you have any problems with colour rendition in different runs of the same book in the finished books? I had two separate runs of two copies each of my book and the second run had quite a marked yellow saturation problem. I contacted the company and their response was quite unsatisfactory. What is your experience?

[Val Mansfield]

I use Booksmart - I think!

Trevor,I have never had different runs. I sometimes order two copies at the same time and I haven't noticed a difference between copies, but I have not ordered a second copy at a later date.

The quality doesn't match a good print on high quality paper, but for memories i think it is fine.

[Mike Buckley]

The question of print quality will vary among production facilities. Blurb uses facilities all over the world so neither Val nor Trevor, as examples, who live in very different parts of the world have to pay exorbitant shipping costs.

Blurb's web site states the following: "It is simply not possible for POD [print on demand] printers to duplicate the finely controlled color management that is possible with offset printing, so some slight hue differences may appear from book to book."

I can confirm that that is a reasonable expectation, as I sell printing services for a digital quick printer (we do no offset printing). I'm not suggesting that Trevor's issue is representative of only a slight difference or that his books have been produced within a reasonable standard of tolerance, as I have not seen his books. Instead, I'm explaining that we should expect some differences from copy to copy of the same book even when they are produced in the same production run.

[Jeff S]

Good topic Paul. I enjoyed the books made by all three of you. I'm just learning about LR5's book tab. It's great to see some fine examples of finished work as a frame of reference.

[rhe]

Great book Paul...thanks for sharing. We were in Japan at the end of May and early June. Here is my first Photo Book from that trip. I put it together with software from Blacks (a local Photo and Camera store) and had them print a hard cover copy for me to show family and friends.

https://as.photoprintit.de/web/85023...SessionTimeout

This link is from a site that let its security certificate expire on June 19th, 2013. I have asked them to renew their certificate but have not heard back from them. It is a safe site and will not mess up your computer.

-Lloyd.

[dan marchant]

Just wanted to add to this thread as I have just received copies of my first (small) photo-book. I tried Mixbooks as someone on another forum had recommended them. The book creation tool was excellent. I found the interface to be very intuitive and didn't need any help getting things set up the way I wanted. I had a slight problem working out how to handle images that are layered one on top of the other (as in how to access the lower images) but even that I sorted with a little trial and error and no need to go to the instructions. This was in contrast to the Lightroom Book module which I found very unintuitive (and I am a staunch Lightroom fan).

The system has a bunch of themes (travel, nature, beach etc) and each has numerous ready made page templates with pre-made background images and decals (shapes such as shells, seahorses crabs etc etc) that can be used to decorate pages. You can drop images into these templates and add text to the pre-assigned text areas or edit the pages by deleting, adding or moving stuff. Alternatively you can just add a blank page and then select elements to go on the page.

I think the only thing I had a problem with was finding info on what format/resolution my images should be uploaded at for best results. Having said that if you load a particularly low res image (below what the system thinks is acceptable) it displays a helpful warning over the image.

Quality and price - I haven't done much research into other providers yet so I don't know how the price compare (though I intend to). I have seen a Blurb book that someone made up for a friend and was underwhelmed with the build quality, paper or print quality - but I suspect they selected the cheapest option. I did this book as a birthday gift and didn't really have enough photos to do more than the standard 2 pages. I selected the standard hard cover 8.5 x 8.5 which cost $30.5 plus tax and shipping. I bought two and made use of a discount code on the site that saved me $19 on the deal.

The package arrived today and I have to say I was very impressed with the quality. The blurb book I saw (again I have no idea what quality/price level was selected for that) looked rather like someone had printed it at home, but bound and with a more professional soft-cover. The mixbook looks like something you would buy in a book shop. The cover is sturdy and well printed and all the photos and text are very good indeed. I was concerned about the images as my monitor isn't calibrated (but all prints I have had done at local printers have been good so it can't be too bad). But there are definitely no complaints about the end result.

If anyone is interested in looking at what I did you can view it at...
http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/i...?vk=98IdKrJ7Ne

As I said earlier this was a present for family so quite a few of the images are family photos, mixed with travel type stuff. I also started a second book which is a full on travel photo book (from my trip to Bali) but I held off on that until I saw the finished version of this one. I am now going to go ahead with that second book.

Final note: I think the biggest problem with a service like this will be people with badly uncalibrated monitors uploading pic and getting back something that looks nothing like the images on their monitor.

[Mike Buckley]

So glad to know your Mixbook project worked out so well, Dan!

For more follow-up about my ongoing Blurb project, I have now completed two soft-cover books using the medium quality paper (there is a cheaper and more expensive paper) and neither one of them looks remotely like home printing as you described. I was especially pleased that though I messed up the positioning of the photo on the second book's front cover, the folks at Blurb apparently caught my obvious mistake and repositioned it to make it look as anyone would have intended.

Unless folks are on a deadline, it's best to wait for sales by Blurb usually in the range of 20% to 25% off the regular price. I was lucky to get my second book produced at about 30% off in November even though I would have printed it at full price because of a deadline involved in getting it to friends as a gift.