I had a similar problem with the second printing of a book being much worse than the first. I complained and had a reply in about 1 hour and the problem they agreed to reprint within 24 hours. I guess their customer service is not consistent. Unfortunately neither is the printing. I still think blurb is a great idea and I hope they will overcome these issues as time goes on. I will continue to use them.
Originally Posted by Frank Petronio
Yes I will order some more regardless of the QC issues, even with one bad page the book still makes a very good impression and it is even easier than whipping out a portfolio to show my work. So it is a fast way to show you're a serious photographer. Their pricing is still competitive and the PDF to Print workflow is the deciding factor. Once the less expensive places embrace customer-created PDFs I'll give them a shot but right now Blurb is the only under $200 per book printer I know who has that workflow.
I ain't buying them for sheer image quality... they are better than those darn LuLu Xerox Docucolor books at least.
I already know I can spend $200 plus and get better quality control, thanks.
So what are the other options? Googling "Print on Demand" produces a whole slew of results.
Yeah not with a PDF workflow though, and most of them are worse, they use Docutechs. The HP Indigo that Blurb uses is better, compare a Lulu to Blurb book.
frank
have you considered trying paperchase ?
they also use indigo presses but i am not sure about
the pdf workflow ... and it isn't a 1-off order sort of thing
you have to order a bunch at once ....
- john
I believe Paperchase printing offers PDF workflow. http://www.paperchase.net
$350 for one at the same specs as the Blurb... (5x) so it's like I was saying...
If I wanted 10,000 I can get them for $12 each, that's only $120K ;-)
But I'm looking for about a $50 to $75 decent one-off photo book without any smeared pages or off-color color. It doesn't have to be perfect or flawless, just pleasing and without any glaring defects. That's the whole premise of Print-On-Demand and it hasn't lived up to it, at least for printing a relatively simple photography book.
It's like I said on my site, the final product, if it didn't have the obvious errors I'm complaining about, would probably sell in the $30-40 range in a commercial bookstore. Maybe ~$25 if they have a benefactor. I don't mind paying 2-3x that for a one-off, but that one-off ought not have any obvious errors that any lay-person could see.
Last edited by Frank Petronio; 14-Sep-2009 at 22:29.
we had a badly printed dust jacket and scratched pages.
they asked us to photograph the damaged pages and email them the images of the damage, they then reprinted it within a week ...
A third book just arrived. No obvious defects, nice binding actually, except that the greyscale images' color drifts from a warm magenta to a neutral grey under tungsten, but everything is neutral in daylight. And a few of the images look like they have a different Gamma than most of the others, that isn't consistent either.
It's acceptable. But I wouldn't rely on these guys to do any better, it is what it is.
This thread has some possibly useful information
http://cookcomm.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=1524296
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks