BLURB.COM -- A SUBJECTIVE REVIEW
MY EXPERIENCE PRINTING A BLURB BOOK

Shortly after I published the below commentary, Blurb updated its software to version 2.0.  After playing with the new software, I find the below still relevant, with these additions:  (1) Blurb now offers a  12 x 12 format; (2) the updated software now permits you to easily design your own templates, allowing you in seconds to painlessly choose the size of your images and the placement of your text; and (3) alas, I continued to experience bugs when working with text.  

After recently deciding to self-publish a book of photographs, I narrowed my list of potential online publishers to:  Blurb.com, Lulu.com and AsukaBook.com.  Of these, AsukaBook USA very well may offer the highest quality, but after being required to register to see their price list, and after actually seeing it, I removed them from my own list.  As for Blurb and Lulu, they may be like Canon and Nikon -- two horses that keep taking the lead from each other --  but after reading several reviews and blogs, I finally settled, rightly or wrongly, on Blurb. 


Book sizes

 Blurb presently offers the following book sizes:  13 x 11, 8 x 10, 10 x 8 and 7 x 7.   Options include softcover, hardcover with dust jacket, and "Image Wrap" (where your front cover is embedded into the hardcover).

Blurb's BookSmart Software

To publish a Blurb book you first download a free software application called BookSmart.  It provides templates and custom design options which permit you to craft a book filled with photographs and text.  The application requires you to import the images as JPEGS at preferably 300 ppi.  While the program resizes your images with a slider, I decided to resize mine before importing them so I could sharpen them as I wished.  When you're done, you push the order button, wait for your book to be uploaded to Blurb, and place your order.  About 10 days later, your book or books arrive.

So how easy is the software?  Even if you're not a software person, it's relatively simple to learn, with a user-friendly interface.  I watched one of Blurb's video tutorials, checked out the FAQ page, played with a few buttons, and in 15-20 minutes had relative command of the program.    

But while the software is easy to learn, I experienced a good deal of frustration using it.  On one occasion my computer (which operates on XP Pro 64) locked, requiring me to reboot.  When I did, I found my Blurb files to be corrupted and unusable.  From this I learned that while the software constantly updates itself and apparently has an automatic backup, a manual backup is still a good idea. 

Another frustration was the failure of various menus to globally apply a page's design options to other pages.  For example, a header menu continued to put the name of my book at the top of each page.  When I deleted it, I was given the option to apply the deletion to the rest of the book.  I constantly chose this option, but it never worked.  Similar such options also constantly failed, forcing me to repeat the same actions for every page. 

Perhaps the most frustrating experience was dealing with text.  While the program purported to allow me to default the font to one of my choice, it never worked, constantly defaulting back to a Georgia font.  Worse, in creating a four-page index of photographs, whenever I needed to change a line or add a few words, I first had to wrestle with the program's insistence on using Georgia, then found that a good deal of the subsequent text had changed its characteristics, including the deletion of the last letters of several words.  As for preparing an index in Microsoft Word and pasting it in, this didn't make it easier.  The result would again default to Georgia, then present a spacing nightmare. 

With a lot of persistence and waning patience, I finally got what I wanted, but the process debilitates the creative process, making even the slightest change a long and unpleasant process.

Blurb's Templates  

Blurb offers a number of photography templates, but to my eye, only a few are good enough to use.  While some of my pages show more than one photograph, I generally used a template that provided precisely what I would have designed myself:  a simple one-image layout. 

Expense

Like some online publishers, Blurb doesn't have a minimum requirement.  You can order one book at a time, and if you order more than 10, discounting starts at 10 percent.  And while Blurb offers competitive pricing when compared to other online publishers, the expense is not, in my opinion, low enough to turn most books into a profit center.  

Here's an example of the pricing, before select add-on's:

This pricing includes the placement of two Blurb.com logos in your book.  If you wish to get rid of them, you'll pay between $5.00 and $11.00 per book.  Also, if you want "premium" as opposed to "standard" paper, the upgrade will cost you between $3.00 and $7.00 or more, depending on the type of book and number of pages.

This means that it cost approximately $70 to publish one 136-page hardcover book, with dust cover, no logo and premium pages -- not a small investment.

Quality

 The book itself

 I opted for Blurb's 10 x 8 format, and ordered three different books:  one softcover with premium pages, one hardcover with premium pages, and one hardcover with standard pages.  The hardcover is advertised to be an 8-pt. black linen book with library-quality binding.  On receiving it, I was pleasantly surprised.  The dust jacket was impressive, and the book had the look and feel of a quality retail book.  On the down side:  take off the dust jacket and unfortunately, you've got a cover and spine with no print.  On closer inspection, I noticed that the pages are bound together by a process that uses glue, the durability of which only time will tell.   As for the softcover, rather than giving me the gray background color I'd ordered, the background was mottled gray -- not what I wanted but not altogether unpleasant. 

My 136-page hardcover book has 109 photographs.  After comparing the "standard" page with the "premium" page, I immediately noticed the difference.  Despite advertising to the contrary, the premium page doesn't enhance the appearance of the photographs (at least to my eye), but because it's 30% thicker, it does have a more substantial feel.  So while the standard page doesn't itself feel cheap, the premium page is impressive enough to warrant, in my opinion, the increase in cost. 

 Image quality

 I spend a great deal of time in Photoshop using curves, digital blending, HDR, ICC profiling, and the like to assure that when my prints come off the Epson Stylus Pro printers that I use, they have a rich dynamic range, and just the right contrast.  For this reason, when I began my Blurb experiment, I didn't expect much.

Blurb presently uses the 4-color HP 5000 Indigo Press, and while there appears to be a lot of technical discussion on various sites about what ICC profiles you should use to prepare your images, my guess is, so long as you use a color-calibrated monitor, you're almost there.  As for me, when I converted my TIF files into JPEG files for Blurb, I viewed the changes using the CMYK proof setup provided in Photoshop.  If you want to spend the time to try and refine this process, I suggest you start with Tim Daly's article at:  click here 

Okay, so now that we're in the final stretch, what's the bottom line?  How good do your Blurb photographs look on the published page?  My assessment:  obviously not as good as a print coming from a professional Epson printer, but frankly -- not so bad.  The glossy/pearl-like image on the cover really "pops," with a loss in detail that only a careful inspection would reveal.  As for the semi-matte images within, while they don't have the presence that comes with the richer blacks and more dynamic tonal range of a professionally printed image, their quality sufficiently pleases.  They do justice to your vision.  And most surprising of all, I found little or no loss of detail in the shadows -- an admirable feat indeed.

A  word of advice

Anxious as you may be to order your books, I strongly advise (1) that you double and triple-check each page; (2) that you have someone else do the same; and (3) that you order only one copy in the first instance.  Only after you receive that copy and proof it again would it be a good idea, in my opinion, to order more books.

Conclusion

If you want to publish a photography book as a profit-making venture, my guess is, Blurb isn't for you.   Aside from marketing and distribution hurdles, the price-per-book is too high.  But if you'd like to vanity press your work for family and friends, or if you'd like to market yourself as a professional, Blurb presents a viable option.  While the software is easy to learn, some unresolved bugs makes it sometimes painful to use, but if you're patient, you'll create a retail-quality book with very acceptable image reproduction.