have you seen blurb?

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bonneville
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have you seen blurb?

Unread post by bonneville »

Not sure if this is the right place to post this but....

One off books of book shop quality are now well within the reach of any photographer. I don't know if this has been commented on here anywhere else but a website called BLURB (in the US I think) is able to turn around a spanking book within a week for mere pennies, and the quality is really outstanding.

Out of curiosity I created a book of 26 of my images taken with my alpha mount cameras this year, one for each letter of the alphabet, and called the book "alpha~betical", just for fun. It was really to test out the software (free download), turnaround (7 days with UPS), quality (excellent) and cost (very reasonable). hardback, printed dustjacket, so easy.

You can also sell copies of your own work through their shopfront (I've already sold a dozen) and although this must sound like an advert for them, it isn't, I thought you might like to give it a go if you are looking for a good way of displaying your efforts.

Links from my website. Comments welcome.

Brian :)
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bonneville
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Re: have you seen blurb?

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Sonolta wrote:Glad it's working for you and the prices do seem decent. While we are on the subject of the alphabet, check this gallery out:

http://www.pbase.com/abbarich/the_alphabet" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

-Sonolta
Good one, thank you. I did an Open University course last year as I really am a newbie (it appeared in DK's last magazine edition) and one of the first projects was to go out and hunt for letters in life. Far from easy when I tried it.

Have you seen the inspired photo on Dyxum where the sunlight on an archway creates a perfect 7? here

Brian
Last edited by bonneville on Tue Dec 30, 2008 8:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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bakubo
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Re: have you seen blurb?

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How is the quality of the photo printing? Is it high quality with good, thick paper like in a really good photo book?
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Dr. Harout
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Re: have you seen blurb?

Unread post by Dr. Harout »

I just flipped the book. Congratulations Brian. That's very nice. :D
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bonneville
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Re: have you seen blurb?

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bakubo wrote:How is the quality of the photo printing? Is it high quality with good, thick paper like in a really good photo book?
Bakubo

Difficult to answer precisely, but I was very pleased with the result. It's not fine art that's for sure, but I have professionally produced photography books on my shelf with both better and worse quality, so it's on a par with the average commercial product.

When you compile a book you can choose between different levels of quality paper, which obviously affects the final cost.

Brian
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bonneville
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Re: have you seen blurb?

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Dr. Harout wrote:I just flipped the book. Congratulations Brian. That's very nice. :D
Many thanks H. It has given me the inspiration to take much better pictures in 2009, to consider a theme and produce something tactile that others can also enjoy, hopefully. (There is only so much wall space in my cottage :lol: )

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Re: have you seen blurb?

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It sure is a fine book and you managed very well the theme with suprising Photo's for each letter from the Alpha Bet. Thanks for sharing and the link.

Are there any PA'ers in Europe having experience with Blurb already and if yes can you share us your opinion about S&H?
John.

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bonneville
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Re: have you seen blurb?

Unread post by bonneville »

Thanks for the feedback John
MFS wrote:Are there any PA'ers in Europe having experience with Blurb already and if yes can you share us your opinion about S&H?
I had an email from BLURB inviting me to track the progress with UPS and it appears to have been produced in NL and despatched through Belgium to UK.

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Re: have you seen blurb?

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bonneville wrote:Thanks for the feedback John
MFS wrote:Are there any PA'ers in Europe having experience with Blurb already and if yes can you share us your opinion about S&H?
I had an email from BLURB inviting me to track the progress with UPS and it appears to have been produced in NL and despatched through Belgium to UK.

Brian
Hahaha, this is fun. Blurb.com however is based in San Fransico according the Whois info. Tried too find out if there is is http://www.blurb.nl" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; but there isn't. Thanks Brian.
John.

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Re: have you seen blurb?

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I tested Blurb in the first weeks of their launch, and ordered a rather slim landscape book (the early software was very time consuming to use) showing a few views of the Scottish Borders. I thought it was expensive at about $70 plus shipping because I am used to the prices charged by British labs for the same item - Loxley Colour in Glasgow for example will make you books using liquid-toner colour xerography, otherwise known as digital litho, which is what Blurb do. So will AMI in Edinburgh, VPS Labs in Guildford, and any decent small lab which has invested in the Unibind book production system plus a high-end Canon, Indigo or similar e-printer. Photokina was full of this stuff. You can buy your own covers and binding system from office suppliers like Viking, Staples, Neat Ideas or get a dedicated set-up for photographers from Marrutt & Co in the UK. Unibind even market direct. You need a good inkjet or laser printer, a supply of the correct type of double sided paper (Kodak Picture Paper was ideal, have not been able to find it recently), a guillotine, a 12"+ cold laminator from Xyron (mine is only 8.5"), and a Unibind kit. At around £7 each the glue-spine covers are a bit expensive, but it's fun to be able to assemble your own books and the basic tools are not all that expensive - £200/$300 will set you up if you own a printer already.

http://www.unibind.com/Basic/binding/st ... obook.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (Unibind)
http://www.londongraphics.co.uk/acatalo ... n_449.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (this can produce laminated covers)
Guillotine - my latest one was £9.50 from LIDL and is excellent with clamps and guides plus two cutting methods

But Blurb is mainly about the community (Blurberati etc) and the on-line tools for production and selling. Blurb becomes economical when you want to create a 400-page book from your thesis, the prices per page fall to a fraction of the cost of smaller books. It should be economical for longer runs as well, but they do not seem to have a quantity run discount structure, just one related to the number of pages in the book. What doesn't work is the mark-up and selling. A decent book is going to cost YOU $50 before you add the mark-up, which they suggest should only be $10 or so, and the customer pays shipping. You could be paying Blurb in effect $1000 to print just 20 books, and you don't even have access to all that work - the layout design process. It does not exist in PDF form, in e-Book form for download and online reading or transfer to Sony's Reader (etc), or in Quark XPress or InDesign form - it's trapped forever in Blurb's system.

If you have $10,000 to spare you can get 1000 books printed - $10 each not $50 - by a traditional litho printer. Then you can sell them at a fair $30 or so and make a decent margin on each one, while giving the customer a reasonable deal. But of course, you can create your one-off Blurb book for just $70, and that's much easier. I am surprised to see The Guardian publishing through Blurb and I bet they have negotiated a special deal to enable the low pricing of their OBAMA book.

My book used 130gsm (converted from whatever US lb-weight value they quoted) art paper internally, with a simple casebound cover, glued into spine, and gloss laminated single sided 170gsm slipcover. That is comparable to any normal printed book, the paper weight is about the same as Photoworld magazine. I believe they have since improved the weight of internal stock, enhanced the binding methods, etc. I also think the prices may have fallen, because the idea of anyone paying $70 for the slim volume I produced was silly. $30 maybe at the most. It would not even have been economical for wedding books.

As a company they are PR-heavy but when I agreed to meet for an interview with their CEO (at their request) they just reshuffled the interview slots as higher value media agreed to cover the story, on the basis she was on a flying visit to London and her time was so valuable it was rationed (so my slot disappeared, presumably replaced by a national paper or something). Their PR firm was very bad at communications, they have since tried the same stunt and of course I won't waste time pursuing it. She is ex-Kodak.

There are many alternatives if all you want is a book for yourself, like myphotobook.co.uk:
Or the big competitor - Lulu, who seem to be losing out to Blurb right now:
http://www.lulu.com/uk/products/paperba ... 3godZXdrDQ" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

David
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Re: have you seen blurb?

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

For fun I priced up what LULU would charge to make new copies of Photoworld editions which anyone could buy on demand - not a bad idea to upload the back issues as PDFs dropped into pages, for on-demand printing.

$12.70 per copy before any markup. That's pretty steep.

I also priced up what they would charge to print the 1600 copies I normally get printed, and it worked out at over £10,000 which is about six times the price for conventional litho printing with a laminated cover. It's not a printing method which can be used for much except premium price print on demand sales.

David
aster
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Re: have you seen blurb?

Unread post by aster »

Congratulations Bonneville! :D

Busy...busy... busy...been busy behind our backs I see. Yet an other to hit the home shelves and I hope you'll be in good health to create many more books...

Micro next?

Have a nice new year
Yildiz
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bonneville
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Re: have you seen blurb?

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aster wrote:Have a nice new year
Yildiz
Thank you, and you too :D

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bonneville
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Re: have you seen blurb?

Unread post by bonneville »

Thanks David. The blurb interface has been revised and was easy to use. I "discovered" it as it featured in Digital Photo magazine (Dec issue) as a good buy.
David Kilpatrick wrote:There are many alternatives if all you want is a book for yourself, like myphotobook.co.uk:
Or the big competitor - Lulu, who seem to be losing out to Blurb right now:
David
My first "real" book, "As You Were!" was published in hardback in the mid 1990s by a publishing company specialising in military books. It sold 500 copies, was reprinted and sold out again, but is now no longer available from them. As I continued to get enquiries from "old soldiers" I turned my original manuscripts into a Lulu book a couple of years ago and I now regularly get a monthly credit into my Paypal account as it continues to sell, mostly by word of mouth through the host of ex British Forces forums, where it seems to still be sought after and talked about, particularly as there is a review of it on Lulu by Paul Whitehouse.

There is a link to it on the front page of my website.
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Re: have you seen blurb?

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

Actually, I have had an idea. There is no reason why Blurb's 400-pager monster deals should not be used. I could take ALL of the back issues and back articles I have on my system, create A4 pdfs and assemble a book covering many issues.

In fact, I reckon it would be cheaper to do that than to get the actual copies bound up to keep.

David
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