Publisher's Description
From Blurb:
Blurbs BookSmart bookmaking software is the centerpiece of Blurbs creative publishing service, which turns blogs, business plans, recipes, photos, email, wikis, or any other content into a bookstore-quality book. This bookmaking application allows users to drag and drop pictures and text into professionally designed book templates, with dust jackets, customizable backgrounds, page layouts, and color palettes.
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All versions:
2.6 starsout of 5 votes
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Current version:
2.6 starsout of 5 votes
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My rating:
Write review
Results 1-5 of 5
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"easy and great quality."
Version: Blurb 1
Pros
free software
Cons
takes a fair amount of time to make a book
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"Other Reviewers Are CLUELESS (imho)"
Version: Blurb 1
Pros
User-Friendly software - not complicated.
Excellent quality products.Cons
Software is heavy and sometimes slow.
Note: If you can, try to save your work in progress on a Flashcard/USB drive, because it's easier to take your book WITH YOU if you move from one computer to another.Summary
All the reviewers complain about the "picture quality." Notice they took shortcuts, didn't follow the photo guidelines. If you use a high quality photo editor; like Corel/PSP or PhotoShop, works GREAT.
Follow the PHOTO guidelines to a TEE and you won't have issues.
I ordered 2 demo books:
1) 7x7 paperback w/photos, glossy black paper. Outstanding.
2) 5x8 hardcover w/dust jacket, white matte paper, mostly b/w text, minimal photos. Outstanding.
If you're confused about HOW to use Blurb at any point, there is an exhaustive Forum on their site. Hundreds of users will help you out if you get stuck or have questions. -
"Poor service, late shipping, mediocre print quality"
Version: Blurb 1
Cons
No telephone support to resolve simple issues, shipped item 3 days after informing me that it was shipped and still charged 2-day shipping, images were dark. Will not use them again
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"Poor printing quality, overall bad experience"
Version: Blurb 1
Pros
SmartBook is the only thing I enjoyed about my very bad experience with Blurb. Do check out other providers and if you're a pro, use an off-set or real life digital professional printing service. At the end of the day, you'll save money and won't have to go through emotional distress.
Cons
"Blurb guarantees your satisfaction with the workmanship of your book."
Blurb.com
Sadly, they don't exactly follow this.
If you're an art student, faculty member (well, some of my professors were not that happy with my idea of using Blurb to print my thesis book), or a professional artist, Blurb is not the place to get your work published.
I initially printed my book with them and had to return all the books. The book had strong cyan (turquoise) and green casts. They have serious problems with the printing of the covers (extremely dark), because the same file I used for the cover I used inside the book and the difference in printing is dramatic. To add more book drama to my case, the cover also curled.
The quality of the paper was fine, but nothing to write home about.Their software is fantastic, though; the only nice part of this experience was working with their BookSmart application.
My mistake? Not ordering a "demo" book. I didn't do it based on a couple of peers' previous experiences of ordering one single book to see how the printing quality was, and then ordering more books and getting something completely different. After this happened to me, I've seen a ton of reviews complaining about this particular issue. "I got a demo and then got completely different books in my second order" I thought it was a waste of time.
The grand closing of my case is the customer support. Very nice and polite, I have to admit. However, I initially got the promise of a full refund (minus one of the books I kept for my archive), and then surprise, surprise! Because my customer support agent bought a book in a bookstore with a "slight curling on the cover" apparently similar to mine, he and his boss decided I didn't deserve the full refund, but only two-thirds of my money back. Wow! OK. So you promise something, treat a workmanship defect that your product has as something minor, and then you drop your offer? OK.
For the $20 I paid for each paperback book, I expected a flawless product, as you should for any expensive product. I didn't get anything close to that.
I will never use them again.
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"Poor print quality"
Version: Blurb 1
Pros
Way less expensive than most print on demand companies. Prices are for a range of pages ie:20-40, 41-80, 81-120. Offers up to 440 pages, whereas most have a capacity of 100 to 160 pages. Not sure if this diminishes quality or durability though.
Cons
I just made a book with Blurb. I wanted to try a small softcover project to test their quality before I put tons of hours into something. I must say I was soooooooo disappointed! I chose to not make my pages in Photoshop, but do them directly in their program to see the “virgin� quality. My images are from a 10MP DSLR with each photo being about 2-3 MB each, so the input quality was fine. Their output was dark, grainy, oversaturated photos. I was floored. I’ve heard such glowing reviews that I couldn’t believe it. I contacted Blurb and they offered to remake the book for me, indicating that they can only keep prices so low by not recalibrating the printer after each book. They figured mine was one of the 3% of books that were toward the end of the run. So, they sent me another book and it was the same. What a disappointment.
I have a full Excel spreadsheet comparing companies if anyone wants.
