[matthew]

I'm about to start a project to create a photo book, and have almost decided to use Blurb to handle the publishing. I know a couple of people (not to name names) have mentioned doing this themselves, so what is your impression of the design process and the finished quality?

Has anyone else created a book through them or another self-publisher / print-on-demand service, and what were your experiences?

[wulinka]

hey Matthew,

blurbs pricing is really competitive,
but I found the software a bit limiting and to be honest the print quality
is not convincing. I was wondering how Kombi felt about it (to name a name... hope you don't mind, Kombi)
I have printed photobooks with two other providers and the quality was much better in both cases,
but they don't offer print on demand and prices are about twice as high as with blurb.
My blurb book simply lacks brilliance, vibrance, the prints are darkish and very flat.

Sorry not to be more positive, I am not aware of other providers of print on demand at comparable prices.

Greetings!!

Uli

[matthew]

Thanks Uli;

I've had my photos included in a Blurb book, and found the reproduction to be good but not excellent. I wish the paper was better, and found that the text wasn't that crisp. But I also wasn't in control of the process, so I'm not sure how much of that was due to Blurb, and how much was a result of the all-volunteer collaborative production.

My goal is to produce a book of my photos of the 'Sunken City' landslide area in San Pedro, California, for my father to have and use in his science class. It's something that might have a broader appeal - one of these photos generates about one-third of the traffic to my blog, since it takes first place in a google image search - so I'm tempted to use Blurb simply for their bookstore. But it does look like there are better services out there.

Steven Shore uses iPhoto to do his limited-run books... maybe I should too.

[matthew]

Useful links:

http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/2008/08/...hed_1.html
http://aphotoeditor.com/2008/08/25/joerg...hed-books/

[shuttertalk]

From memory Lulu seems to be a popular option. Not sure how competitive their pricing is, and how good their quality is - haven't used them before.
http://www.lulu.com/en/products/photo_books/

[slejhamer]

I recently saw a finished product from http://www.mypublisher.com/

In my opinion the print quality was okay; not high-end glossy coffee-table book quality, more like something you could get from an average inkjet printer. In some cases the prints looked poor and almost posterized, but I'm guessing that was because of the actual submitted image; other prints in the book looked reasonably crisp. Paper was matte if I recall correctly; nothing special.

The person who had it done has used Blurb as well, she told me that Blurb is easier to use and less expensive, but the print quality is not as good as she gets with Mypublisher.

YMMV, as always.

I plan to try Blurb in a few months in their small 7x7 format; it will be a Christmas gift for my 9-year old daughter who is getting into photography.

[shuttertalk]

Did some trawling through previous discussions, looks like mypublisher and lulu came up previously as well.
http://shuttertalk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4645

Toad seemed to have a good experience from lulu:
http://shuttertalk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8759

[matthew]

Thanks for those, Jules - I just checked the link for Lulu and it tells me that they're proud supporters of the Tiger-Cats and The Rock. They're two local and Canadian-game pro sports teams. While I'm not sure how proud people can be of something from Hamilton, The Rock play Canada's national game. It looks like I'll be going with them.

Something that's really come through in my reading is that it really depends on where in the world people are. Blurb in particular gets worse reviews in Europe than it does in North America. I've decided that I'll try Lulu, iPhoto, and MyPublisher for three different projects, and then continue to use the best of the bunch.