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