Anyone created a book? Happy ?

[guywalder]

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I've done 3 small books, using Pixopolis in germany. Pretty flexible on layout and good for WYSIWYG. The first was a light hearted set of party snaps, then I did a 'test' book, using a wide range of pictures (high contrast, low contrast, saturated colour, B&W etc). All looked pretty good, except the B&W which wasnt so convincing, especially with predominantly dark pictures. After that I went ahead with a bigger book, but suddenly the print quality, on some shots, fell short

I thought I was onto a good thing, but not if you cant rely on the quality...

[pleeson]

I've used both Blurb and Apple, on a iMac. Apple was better quality, though Blurb was quite nice and much less expensive

[stevme]

I've used blurb (blurb.com) to create 2 books, one hard cover. I am satisfied with both results.

 

I should add one caveat to using the Blurb software (version 1.9). When you first open a book there are certain default pages (such as cover, copyright notice, and title pages) that all books have. On the copyright notice page there is certain default language which they suggest.

 

Here is the problem with that page: if you do not delete this text (or forget to do so) and you use a BLACK background for your book pages, you will not notice that that text is still present on the copyright page (even though you have added some of your own language before or after it in, say, white). When you receive the printed book, that language, even though it does not show up on your computer (or on the webpage book preview feature of the Blurb website), will ALSO print on the black ink. Because the black ink for type and the black ink for background are different, you will SEE this default language that you did not delete, in addition to whatever you intended to put there. Then go back to your original background color.

 

I caught this problem and it was resolved in a reasonably way by the folks at Blurb. I ended up reprinting the book (at not cost to me). Kudos to Blurb on this.

 

My suggestion: DELETE the suggested language and put in your own. CONFIRM that the language is gone by temporarily changing the background color of the copyright page to white, thus better seeing any text that would be hidden by a black background.

 

I assume a software modification will eventually take care of this issue, as I would guess I am not the only one who had the problem.

 

Again, printing quality is high, so I still recommend their service.

 

Steve

[dhsimmonds]

I was talking to a Canadian guy just this week who produced and printed all the pages for his own 100 plus page book. He then had it perfectly bound in leather covers by Wyvern Press in the UK. The binding and cover material cost him 40UK pounds and he used a nice photo inkjet paper, not as heavy as we would normally use. There were lots of text and lined framing to the images, with each captioned. It was of course a one off but I suppose with a bit of effort it could be repeated! The final result was stunning with the layout of each page exactly as he wanted.