Review: My new Blurb book

For the last few weeks I have been working on a book to showcase my best photography work from 2009, titled ‘Bright Ideas’.  This is my second book that I have had printed and the second time that I have chosen Blurb to print it for me.  Some of my reasons for choosing Blurb over the other options out there are, price point, book sizes, and page count options.  They have 6 layout sizes 7in x 7in square, 5in x 8in book for text, 8in x 10in portrait and landscape options, 11in x13in large landscape and 12in x 12in large square.  They have two paper types and 80lb and 100lb weight, although as of right now the 100lb is limited to 160 page books.

Most of their competitors only offer a couple of sizes and limit page counts to 100 pages.  Some other companies also charge as much as and extra $2.00 per page over 20 pages.  Blurb has a very generous page range for pricing they are in 40 page increments, you can visit their site for more info on pricing.

When I decided to make a second book I was not immediately sold on using Blurb again.  While my first book was good, it wasn’t on that great level that I expect and I am not alone, there are lots of people on the forum that have quality issues.  The reason for these various issues are that Blurb doesn’t actually print the books themselves they have partnered with printing companies in Europe and the States. But at the end of the day the reasons I stated above for picking them my first time, brought me back for a second time.

With my first book I actually sent the first one back, the pages were not bound evenly and you could see some white space in the gutter and there was more white at the bottom of the gutter than the top.  The good thing about Blurb is their customer service is really good and they will respond right away and when you provide them some images showing the problem they will reprint the book for you.  There have been some extreme cases where people have received several rounds of bad reprints.  I also agree with others that the printers need to step up their quality control and not just send them out the door without giving them a good white glove page flip.

With this latest book I have now used both paper types, and I have to say that even though I love the weight of the 100lb paper, the image quality is much better on the 80lb.  The 100lb paper is matte paper, where the 80lb has a slight gloss to it which ups the quality level in my eye.  That said, I also have to say my first book was printed in Springfield, MA, they also did the reprint.  My second book was printed in Seattle, WA and it is stunning right off the bat.  Also in my first book I used the imagewrap option, which to best describe it, is like a textbook that you used to get in school, where as my second book I used the more traditional dust jacket.  After using both of these options, I must say the dust jacket is the way to go, yes it is more vulnerable to tearing, but its a great glossy finish and the image wrap is a matte finish and the blacks and other darker colors are more muted then they should be.

So with a little background on my dealings with Blurb, here are my findings of my second book.  It a big book, 12in x 12in square and 260 pages with a dust jacket.  White pages with images and text.  Some full page photos and some double truck (spread) images.  There are both color & black and white photos.  The overall quality of this book is amazing.  Here is a cover shot

One mistake that I made was putting a double truck image in the begining of the book, I unfortunately lost a lot of this image of the state house, and when I re-lay out this book I will def. just make this image a single page image.  The reason for this is the book is 3/4in thick and it is bound tightly so the first part of the book doesn’t lay flat, hopefully this will loosen up a bit with time.

The black and white images are great.  Here is a shot of a spread and then a closeup of one of the pages

The double truck images in the middle of the book came out great and the color is amazing!

And lastly here is a shot of a normal layout in full color.  Again the colors are rich and vibrant.  There were only one or two instances that I had photos that were out of gamut for the printer, and they are borderline so I think most people won’t even notice.

There are only a few things that I would do different with this book and they are minor, overall I am extremely happy on how it came out.  I should mention that I am a member of the Blurb B3 services, which is sort of an upper level tier of people that you have to be approved into.  B3 allows you to get a custom ICC profile that was produced for Blurb to accurately soft proof the images for the HP Indigo 5000 offset printer.

With Blurb you also have two options for uploading your book.  You can use their Booksmart software to layout and upload to them, or layout your book in the software of your choice and upload as a PDF directly on the website skipping he Booksmart software.  When I created my first book PDF upload wasn’t an option so I designed my book in Adobe Idesign, saved out high res JPG files from the Indesign document, then laid out those in Booksmart and uploaded.  That first book was then printed with the B3 service, which also guarantees that your book is printed with the same printer everytime.  With my second book I used the PDF upload option, at this time B3 is not a printing option with the PDF upload, this got me a little concerned, but I have to say, after getting the book today I am more then pleased with the normal print upload to the Seattle printer.

B3 custom workflow also adds cost to your book, as does the premium paper so take those things into consideration before you start your book.  Also do yourself a favor, mock up your book first.  I just grabbed one of my small moleskin books that I always keep with me and jotted down ideas like size, title, page range, and layout groupings.  While there are no official chapters to this book, things are grouped together, examples include, photowalks, athletes, urban…

This turned into a lot longer of a post then I thought it would be but I hope this gives you some insight on what to expect.  Visit Blurb to find out more info.  Below are thumbnails of the above images that will bring up some larger images for you to check out.

Happy bookmaking

Jeff