Get Creative, Get Printing, and Get Published! (Blurb.com)

Member Name: NickleIckle

Product:	Blurb.com
Date:	16/04/09 (83 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Professional looking results

Disadvantages: Slow delivery time

Have you ever dreamed of having your own work in print?

Perhaps you have written a novel or a set of poems.. Perhaps you would like to get your blog printed in book form.... Perhaps you would like to showcase all those photographs from your wedding that you have sitting on a cd somewhere.. Perhaps youwould like to produce a school yearbook, a cookbook of your own recipes, a note book featuring your favourite photos... perhaps you are an artist and would like to publsih your best works.. Perhaps you would like to have a professional looking portfolio showing off your photographs, or craft projects..
Well Blurb.com is for you - you just need plenty of time, and some imagination!

I have tried making photo books with a few different companies, and havent been disappointed with them - however, I recenty did some wedding photography for some friends, and wanted something of a bit better quality.
However, Blurb is more than just a book printing company - you can also create and manage your own bookstore. If you have a book that you have created - be it text, photographs or whatever - you can display it in your own online bookshop, and set the price to whatever you like. Blurb handles the order, prints the book, takes the payment, and ships to the customer without you having to deal with any of that hassle. You get paid once a month once you have reached a certain amount of profit. If you dont reach that amount, it rolls over to the next month. The only charge is a processing fee when you are sent a cheque (in the UK it would be £3) everytime you get sent a cheque no matter how much profit you have made on your books.

So how does it work? I would suggest browsing throught the video tutorials and forums looking for "How to Get Started" tips. I did one book without reading all of that, but benefited greatly from reading a bit more when making my second book.

Basically, you download their bookmaking programme called "BookSmart" onto your computer. In some ways this is an advantage - but for me it was a bit of a downside - I could only work at my book on the computer I originally uplodaded my photographs onto (unless I downloaded the BookSmart programme onto each computer I was going to use, and imported the file I was working on.. then I would have to save the changes, and import it back onto my original computer.. blahhhhh .. too much hassle!!).

So you download BookSmart, and it guides you through the bookmaking process. You basically import the photographs you want to use, and then arrange them onto the pages of your book. It can take a while to get the hang of it, but once you do, its great fun! There are a number of page templates - at first I thought they were very limited - but after watching one of the video tutorials, I discovered that they are a lot more versitile than at first glance.

There are also many variations in colours, shades, backgrounds, frames etc that you can play around with until you have found your style.

For those designers out there (perhaps digital scrapbookers?), you can design your pages in Photoshop (or similar) in exactly the layout that you want, and import those pages - also described in the help section on the website.

So far I have just tried the photo books, so I cant comment on the journals, cookbooks, blog books.. but I will try them out too one day!

When you are happy with how your book looks, you upload it (Publish it), and off you go. They keep your book online for 15 days - and if no one buys it, they will remove it to make room for other books. However, you will more than likely order a book for yourself, so that solves that problem, and your book remains in the Blurb bookstore for others to buy!

In the bookstore, you can preview the first 15 pages of any book. Its worth looking through other books that people have made to get layout ideas, and inspiration.

The books come in 5 sizes (sizes in inches)-
7x7
5x8 (b&w text only)
8x10
10x8
13x11

You can also choose softcover, or hard cover - you can get your hardcover book printed with a dustjacket (which I have done both times - looks very professional!), or you can get an "ImageWrap" book with the cover printed directly onto the book itself. Again, look through the website to see examples of each before you decide (as you cant change your mind half way through the book, or after it has been published).

They have recently added the option of "Premium Pages" with a higher quality, heaver paper being used. I have had one book printed with this paper, and to be honest, I didnt notice a huge difference.

The pricing is extremely good value in my opinion for what is a good quality end product - you really do end up with a book that looks as if you have bought it in a bookshop! Price start from £6.95, and increase depending on what options that you choose, and how many pages you have in your book. As an example - I chose a 10x8 hard cover book with a dustjacket that had 62 pages, and it cost £17.95. Very reasonable I think.

I think that the European orders are produced in Holland, but even so, I thought that the delivery time was very slow. The book takes about a week to print, and it has taken over three weeks for each book to arrive. I did chose the economy option - but I still think it was slow. However, once you know that, you can allow for it.

The books arrive well packaged in a cardboard envelope, and plastic covering inside. As I have already said, I was impressed with the overall quality of the books - especially compared to other companies that I have used.

It's a great idea for a really special gift for someone!!

So get creative, and get printing!!

(Review also on ciao)

Summary: Go for it!