LF Book....It's here

[photographs42]

The LF book is here!

At first glance it looks very good. It’s still light here so I took it outside to get a neutral light source. There is no banding or other artifacts that I can see. The layout looks pretty much like I expected.

At first the B&W images looked really good. Then I noticed some that looked a little on the green or cyan side. This is sort of strange because all of the B&W’s were sent as grayscale but some are very neutral and some aren’t??? Inside under incandescent lights they look pretty good (much more neutral).

All of the images look a little darker in the book than on the screen, including the color images. This is hardly noticeable on the lighter images, more so on the darker ones.

The color images look a little dull compared to the screen image. Generally this is normal in my experience with printing color images in books.

There are three flaws in the book. One of the blank pages has a patch of text on it that didn’t come from this book. One of the images has shinny streaks across the image and another image has a shiny streak with a brown center across it. I need to figure out how to discus this with blurb as these are clearly printing flaws and didn’t come from my end.

The book is physically thinner than I expected and the text on the spine is a little too big. I’ve fixed that.

I didn’t buy the Lulu version of the book so I can’t make a comparison there but generally I’m impressed.

I think I need to lighten all but the lighter images. I don’t now how to handle the grayscale issue because it appears to be rather random and under room lighting they look pretty good.

Frank, (or anyone else with experience with Blurb) have you had any issues with flaws in the books you have ordered from Blurb?

Overall it's looking good.

Jerome

[Frank Petronio]

If you ask their customer service they will reprint for free, but I don't think they'll print a new updated file for free. I haven't seen outright flaws or inconsistent B&Ws yet, I've bought 5-6 different runs now. So it sounds like a fluke.

The paper is thin for sure. Unfortunately the process is a little bit trial and error....

The Lulu book was horrid in comparison...

[photographs42]

Here are the worst of the flaws.
13034

13035

[photographs42]

I also found this in the return section of the Blurb site.

Blurb guarantees your satisfaction with the workmanship of your book. On the off chance your book arrives damaged or with a manufacturing defect, contact us via Blurb’s Order Support within 14 days of receipt. We’ll make things right. Please understand that, Blurb does not provide refunds or cancel orders, and except for the cases expressly described in this return policy (i.e., your book arrives damaged, with a manufacturing defect or a defect in workmanship), Blurb cannot otherwise accept returns.

Please note that each book you order from us is individually made by one of Blurb’s top-notch professional book-printing partners. There may be minor differences across different prints of the same books and/or across books printed by our different book-printing partners, including, but not limited to, slight variances in color fidelity and binding type. While we work very hard to keep our product as consistent as possible, this variation is a normal occurrence and is not considered a manufacturing defect or a defect in workmanship and does not qualify for a reprint.

Based on the part I hilighted in red, color fidelity might be a moving target.

Jerome

[Frank Petronio]

yeah but those are truly defects, not variations

and the "color" of the B&W images should be consistent throughout the book

[Andrew O'Neill]

I'll order one when those defects have been tended to. Thanks for your efforts!

[photographs42]

I looked through the book several times last night and several people looked through it at breakfast this morning. It seams that maybe the book just needed either time or exposure to air to “cure”, like the way inkjet prints change color over the first hour or so, the images look very neutral now. They are still a bit dark however.

Andrew: The flaws are a fluke, not something that can be fixed. If your copy has flaws, Blurb will reprint it for you. I’m going to lighten some of the darker images, replace some grayscale with warm tone and by Monday morning it should be ready for primetime.

If anyone else has changes they need to get them to me very soon or they won’t be included.

Jerome

[cyrus]

This is FANTASTIC:)

[photographs42]

All of the revisions have been made. There have been 627 views of the PDF thread and over 400 to this one and I haven’t had much feedback for a while. So…..even though I said I’d wait until 6/1 to publish the book, I think I will go ahead and send it tonight and make it public. I’ll post a link here when it’s ready.

If anyone objects, speak up now. :eek:

Jerome :D :D :D

[David Karp]

No objections here.

And thanks again.

[Frank Petronio]

Thanks for picking this up, it looks great in the PDF.

It would be interesting if we could do a polling from the purchasers of the Blurb book about color consistency, tone of the greyscale images, print defects, etc. so we can get an idea of how good the quality control of Blurb truly is.

[Michael Rosenberg]

Jerome,

I am a little curious about your comments of the color of the b/w images, and what you had submitted.

Do they still appear a little green or cyan?

You said that the images are darker, are the b/w images so much darker than the originals that the shadow details are compromised?

Thanks,

Mike

Did you submit the b/w images as gray scale or assigned to sRGB? On the blurb web site they recommend b/w images being in sRGB.

[photographs42]

Jerome,

I am a little curious about your comments of the color of the b/w images, and what you had submitted.

Do they still appear a little green or cyan?

You said that the images are darker, are the b/w images so much darker than the originals that the shadow details are compromised?

Thanks,

Mike

Did you submit the b/w images as gray scale or assigned to sRGB? On the blurb web site they recommend b/w images being in sRGB.


The Blurb software allows you to import any jpeg image into it but the actual image is immediately copied and stored in a folder called “Library”. Each image is stored as four separate files with the same name but with the extensions of .original, .screen, .thumb and .zoom. If the image file name is say, Tree.jpg it might be stored as 0c5c1f0d-f5d9-46d2-b059-670d4487145b.original (that’s the actual file name in my library. If you change the extension of that file to .jpg, you can open it in PS and it is still grayscale (or whatever it was to begin with). But, as I understand it, when Blurb gets it (E.I. when you publish it) all files are converted to sRGB. That shouldn’t have any effect at all on a grayscale image, at least as well as my little pea brain understands color space. Someone with a more comprehensive understanding of the various color space options might want to expand on this.

When I first opened the book I took it outside in daylight and the first couple of B&W images I looked at were very neutral. As I progressed through the book some of them began looking sort of green or cyan, some worse than others. As I continued to look through the pages inside the house, I noticed the tint wasn’t so noticeable and reasoned that the warm incandescent lights inside were the reason. Over the next couple of days, the images changed to a very neutral tone so I can only conclude that the ink needs time and/or exposure to air to cure to the proper tone. Looking at the printed page, I don’t see anything but very neutral dots. Bottom line is, I think this is as neutral as it can get. To me it looks good under any light source now.

As near as I can tell, all of the images are slightly darker than what I see on my calibrated monitor. It isn’t as noticeable on the lighter images but I think it’s still there. Many of the images were darker than I would have liked them when I received them from Frank. I know that many of the submissions were probably from people who don’t have the equipment to calibrate their system and therefore those images might be lighter or darker than they thought. The problem for me is that I don’t know if that is the case or if those folks just like darker prints. I didn’t lighten any of them on the first go around even it “I” thought they were too dark. In any event, I have chosen to apply a lightening curve adjustment to most of the darker images (both B&W and Color) to try to get them equal to what I see on my monitor. I won’t have any idea what affect this will have until I see another printing of the book and, of course, there is no way of knowing if the new version will be printed exactly the same as the first one. As I quoted in a previous post, there is going to be some variation from one book order to another.

As I understand it (and I clearly admit to having limited knowledge in this arena) , whatever you send them is converted to the sRGB color space. As far as I know, there is no such thing as printing in sRGB. Even color inkjets actually print cmyk. I suppose if I were to dig into their web site deeply enough, I would discover more about what they are actually using to print the books. Whatever it is, looking at the pages with a loupe indicates the same type of dot pattern that comes from an offset press. I suppose it is a digital equivalent of some type but it really doesn’t matter to me. Oh, yes. The answer to your last question is “No”.

Jerome

[photographs42]

It’s public now!
The link below should take you to it.

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/category/Fine+Art+Photography

Jerome :cool:

[Blueberrydesk]

Thanks for all your hard work, Jerome! I just ordered one.

[alec4444]

Hey Jerome! Just reading this now - congrats! Sorry for not getting back to you; never was able to find a way to make that last scan. Can't wait to see the book! Thanks so much!

--A

[Ole Tjugen]

Ordered.

:)

[Remigius]

Ordered, too.

[Jim Becia]

I have a question for those who submitted images. When you submitted your images, were they sharpened or left unsharpedned? I sent an email to Blurb and did not get an answer that made sense. I have been working on the Blurb software and would like to know the answer to whether to sharpen or leave alone. Thanks. Jim

[photographs42]

I’m sure there are others here more qualified to discus this issue but here is my take on it. If you are using a typical flat bed scanner, regardless of the quality of the machine, you need to do “some” sharpening. The act of sharpening is like a separate science and as such is the subject of vast differences of opinion.

My technique is to scan the negative at 1200dpi (max. optical res. For my scanner) without sharpening. In PS after all spotting and basic adjustments I apply Unsharp Mask with settings of Amount: 50% to 150% (usually around 90%), Radius: .5 and Threshold: 0.Always view the image at 100% when doing sharpening and if you can see even a hint of halos you have gone too far.

Except for my own images, I have no way of knowing who did what. One of the images in the book, p.54, is severely over sharpened and the halos are very obvious in the book. I think I added a small amount of sharpening to a couple of the images but I don’t recall which ones.

Generally, the images submitted look good from the perspective of sharpness. I think if you are pleased with the way your image looks on screen at 100% view, you will be happy with the printed version.
Jerome

[Ted Stoddard]

Thanks Jerome for all your hard work... So now I can order one and be very happy with it am I correct?....

[photographs42]

Thanks Jerome for all your hard work... So now I can order one and be very happy with it am I correct?....

Ted,
Yes, you can order now. I hope you will be very happy but, of course, I can’t guarantee your degree of happiness. Your images are among those that were on the darker end of the scale and I adjusted them to some degree but I have no feedback on how that worked. I have ordered a second book, hard cover this time, but I won’t have that for a while.

Part of my problem, as I indicated before, is that I don’t know how far to go. My own images were a little darker than I expected (everything was).

In the case of your color image, there is little if any detail in the dark trees. On the original file received from Frank, these trees measure from the teens to the 20’s. In the revised file, after my adjustment, they measure from the 20’s to the 30’s or 40’s.

The Nautilus image was, perhaps, the largest departure from what was sent. It is very low key to begin with but the book image is considerably darker. Except for the shadows which are zero, the image ranges from the low 20’s to the mid 150‘s. In the book version, the values are around 20 or more points lower than they should be so the brightest part which should be around 155 to 160 is only about 120 or 130. I adjusted this image to put the lightest part around 180.

In addition to all of this, there is the fact that we can’t expect consistency from book to book. In the next printing, everything might be too light. I think Frank had a good idea when he suggested a pole to get opinions about QC. This is a good start and it looks promising to me to pursue it for publishing my own book, which I plan to use more like a catalog. It is never going to be equal to custom printing but at this price point, and the fact that you don’t have to commit to the huge expense of a large printing, it looks viable.

If you, or anyone else, want to wait until I have the new version in my hot little hands, I would be glad to give you feedback then.

Jerome

[cyrus]

Well, now comes the logical next step.

A showing! Can anyone suggest a gallery or venue?

Sponsors?

[photographs42]

Frank (because you’ve dealt with Blurb before) or anyone who knows, how do I find out how many books have sold? It tells me that about 108 people visited the book site for the week of 5/26 and about 25 visits for the week 6/02 but when I click the sales tab it says there is no sales data yet? Quite a few folks here have indicated they have ordered. What gives?

Jerome

[Frank Petronio]

I don't know why, it tells me on mine under "Metrics" -- perhaps it is slow to refresh?

[Hugo Zhang]

Just ordered a hardcover.:) Thanks, Jerome, Cyrus and Frank!

[Blueberrydesk]

Maybe it doesn't count them until they're actually printed and shipped?

[photographs42]

I don't know why, it tells me on mine under "Metrics" -- perhaps it is slow to refresh?

It is Monday morning in Seattle and those poor folks have almost no access to coffee ;) to get them started.

Jerome

[cyrus]

Just ordered a hardcover.:) Thanks, Jerome, Cyrus and Frank!

I don't nearly deserve the thanks that ought to go to Frank and Jerome for actually doing the hard work on this! :p

[photographs42]

I don't nearly deserve the thanks that ought to go to Frank and Jerome for actually doing the hard work on this! :p

But you’re the Publisher.:cool: BTW what is Caspica Press? And wasn’t this your idea in the first place? Or did Frank dream this idea up?

[Frank Petronio]

No it is Cyrus's baby, he is being modest.

He can organize and hang the exhibit ;-)

[cyrus]

No it is Cyrus's baby, he is being modest.

He can organize and hang the exhibit ;-)

Ummm...no.:eek:

[cyrus]

But you’re the Publisher.:cool: BTW what is Caspica Press? And wasn’t this your idea in the first place? Or did Frank dream this idea up?

If I remember right: Frank said that there has to be a publisher and he didnt want to be it. I own a domain name by that name, and we were thinking of using it to distribute the book, if I remember right. Something like that at least. We can still do it if you like. Also, we can get an ISBN number (I think) and distribute it via Amazon.com too, or so I am told by my peons and mere, unworthy underlings (inside joke ;) ).

Gosh I just discoverd this smiley thing. :) One can really over-do it with these things, eh? :)

[Matus Kalisky]

So I ordered one too. Thank you all who have spent time and effort to bring this project to the end.

And - of course - I hope this was not the last one! :p

[Remigius]

just for completeness, here's the direct link to the book:

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/257631

[Geert]

And another copy sold!
Thanks for putting this up!

G

[Don Boyd]

I ordered mine. You can pre-order one from me with my signature for only $795 (goes up to $1195 next month). I hand number each edition and editions are limited to 160,735, not including artist's proofs!;)

[cyrus]

I must say this came out quite nice!

[photographs42]

OK Blurb is catching up. It now shows about 250 views and 1 sale. Now I’m getting nervous. What if you guys don’t like them after my glowing report? I’ll have to enter the witness protection program.:D :D :D

Jerome

[timbo10ca]

Ordered my Hardcover. My thanks to the movers and the shakers!

Tim

[Michael Graves]

Ordered one HC and two SC. If the kids want hard cover they can buy their own. I'm a cheap SOB.

[Blueberrydesk]

UPS just delivered my copy of the new photobook, and while I've only given it a rough cursory overlook, it seems great! Excellent reproduction in the shadow tones and good color tones. The black and whites seem nice and clean, overall a very nice presentation. While I thought the lulu book was ok, this seems leaps and bounds better.

Thanks go out again to Jerome, Frank and Cyrus for getting the ball rolling and seeing it to another completion!

Paul

[photographs42]

Reported sales are up to 10 now. I know there have been more but they are very slow to report.

There have been over 500 views so far.

I’m supposed to receive my hard cover copy on Tuesday. I’ll report back then.
Jerome

[redrockcoulee]

Well now there are at least 11 sold as just order one for myself. The previews look great and really look forward to seeing everyone else's images on a page in my hand, a much better method for me to view an image.

Now to get mobile making images for Larger View 2 :)

In addition to the efforts of Jerome Cyrus and Frank thanks to all the other participants whose images made this book what it is.

[Daniel Geiger]

One more HC sold. FYI. Thanks for the hard work, am looking forward to the volume.

[Michael Graves]

My copies came in today. They actually look very nice. You were right about the B&W images being somewhat dark, but it's not as bad as you made it out to be. Rich is the term I might use. Congratulations on a job very well done, Jerome and Frank.

[photographs42]

My new Hard Cover version of the LF book arrived a few hours ago.

My first impression was a bit spoiled by the sloppy job of folding what was otherwise a very nice dust cover. The spine area was off center toward the front by about a quarter of a inch. After about 10 minutes of flattening and re-folding it is presentable. I couldn’t completely unfold it because of the creases but it looks good if you don‘t scrutinize it too closely.

Moving on, the black linen hard cover is very nice. If you want to be really picky, the spine is a little too wide and/or the pages aren’t centered in the spine (there is more space at the back then at the front). This isn’t a biggie. Both the front and back covers are very flat, at least for now. Sometimes book covers have a tendency to curl. I’m going to hold final judgment on this one for a while but the covers seam very rigid.

Opening the book, I have to say, I am “IMPRESSED”. The test book was good with the caveat that most, if not all, of the images were darker than they should have been and there were three flaws in the printing. In the new version the images are brighter, color is more vibrant and shadow areas more delicate. There are 122 images submitted by 73 photographers. I applied the same adjustment curve to about 40 of the darker images and further adjusted 4 or 5 others. So I altered less than half the images but none of the images appear as dark as in the test book, so I must conclude that the better result is the combined effect of my adjustments and a more faithful printing.

Some of the images are subtly better and some are more dramatically better. For example, if you read my response to Ted Stoddard, you know that I wasn’t very convinced that he would be happy with his images. I can now tell him that I think he will be. Especially his B&W image where in the test book there was little tonal separation across the entire image. In the new version, this image is as close to my monitor image as I think it can be. While some of the images are darker than I would print for myself, they all have detail to an acceptable level.

There is a fine line here and an inherent problem with this type of endeavor. The participants in this project have both a diverse level of photographic skill and talent as well as a more diverse level of digital knowledge and equipment. Specifically, when I look at a digital file, because my system is calibrated, I see the colors and tonalities very close to what they should look like (within the accuracy limits of my calibration). If what I see looks odd, I have no way of knowing the reason. Is the image too dark because the submitter has their system set too bright or are they using a calibrated system and this is the way they like it? If the image has a color cast is it my job to fix it? What if the submitter has it the way they want it and doesn‘t want it “fixed“? Because I don’t know, other than slight tweaking, I have to leave it alone. I’m not complaining, just stating facts.

Finally, as sort of an ultimate test, I changed one of my images from an easy to print image to one of my most difficult. The “Chicago” image (p.81) is difficult to print in the darkroom and more so by any kind of press I have subjected it to. It was taken on a foggy day in February of 1998 and I like to print it with the sky near white and the Hancock Building barely showing through. While it isn’t perfect, it is as good or better than I have had in the past.

So Frank, How do we implement your idea to monitor quality control?

Jerome :)

[Frank Petronio]

I think what you just wrote sums it up. It would be good to hear of how many people found major printing errors out of the total number of books sold, but from what you tell us it is looking good.

[Geert]

Jerome,

I think that my image is one of the more darker B&W in the book.
How does it compare to your monitor in the last print?

My copy is currently underway to my home.

G

[photographs42]

Jerome,

I think that my image is one of the more darker B&W in the book.
How does it compare to your monitor in the last print?

My copy is currently underway to my home.

G

Indeed, your image was among the darker group, in fact, yours was one of the images I made further adjustments to after applying the lightening curve. The final version is better than the test book but it still shows very little detail in the upper shadow area. On my monitor I can see faint detail in the area below the light coming through the roof in the upper left. It’s very faint but you can make out portions of the structural members. Unfortunately there is only a hint of that in the book.

Most of this part of the image is around value 6-12 and raising it very far began to expose areas of gray with no detail and I opted to err on dark side rather that make that portion artificially light. I shouldn’t have been so timid it turns out. The emphasis of this image, however, is on the stool and foreground and in that respect I think that comes off very well. You will have to be the judge and as indicated before, there will be variation from one printing to another.

One thing I wish I had done is to include a stepped grayscale in the back and maybe a color swatch strip as well (although color fidelity seams to be less of a problem). I’m working on a book of my work and that will definitely be included in the initial test printing.

I hope you are at least reasonably satisfied.

Jerome

[Ole Tjugen]

My two arrived today, just before I arrived home. Both hardcover, since shipping was expensive anyway.

The one I've opened looks - just great!

Thanks everybody, and Frank, Cyrus and Jerome in particular. :)

[Geert]

Indeed, your image was among the darker group, in fact, yours was one of the images I made further adjustments to after applying the lightening curve. The final version is better than the test book but it still shows very little detail in the upper shadow area. On my monitor I can see faint detail in the area below the light coming through the roof in the upper left. It’s very faint but you can make out portions of the structural members. Unfortunately there is only a hint of that in the book.

Most of this part of the image is around value 6-12 and raising it very far began to expose areas of gray with no detail and I opted to err on dark side rather that make that portion artificially light. I shouldn’t have been so timid it turns out. The emphasis of this image, however, is on the stool and foreground and in that respect I think that comes off very well. You will have to be the judge and as indicated before, there will be variation from one printing to another.

One thing I wish I had done is to include a stepped grayscale in the back and maybe a color swatch strip as well (although color fidelity seams to be less of a problem). I’m working on a book of my work and that will definitely be included in the initial test printing.

I hope you are at least reasonably satisfied.

Jerome

jerome,

the book arrived today. It looks VERY good, apart from the oversized back of the hardcover.
I am satisfied with the way my image is presented, as I expected loss of detail in the ver deep shadows.

Thanks for the good job, also Frank and Cyrus!

G

[Kirk Gittings]

I am wondering how many people soft proofed their images with the Blurb profiles and whether this is a part of the dark b&w reproduction issue?

[Deane Johnson]

I got into this thread late, but have been following it intently for about 3 weeks. Great project.

It inspired me to create my own book, not about large format photography, but a way to distribute a large collection of vintage b&w family photos that go all the way back to the late 1800s. I had enough information collected, along with the photos, to do a photo/text book. I went for the 11x13 Landscape hardcover and ended up with about 90 pages.

I did the layout work in Serif PagePlus 10, exported it as a PDF (per Blurb), converted it to a .png in Photoshop and placed each page on a full bleed Blub page.

Sent it off today and ordered a test copy. I'm hoping for the best.

Thanks guys for the inspiration. I have some 90+ year old aunts that are going to go ballistic when they see it.

[photographs42]

I am wondering how many people soft proofed their images with the Blurb profiles and whether this is a part of the dark b&w reproduction issue?

Kirk,
Probably you and I are the only ones and I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t prompted me by asking what the proper profile was. I did proof many of the images using the HP profile and there wasn’t much, if any, difference from what was there.

Most of the images were submitted for the Lulu printing and all of the B&W files sent to me from the original book were files that Frank had adjusted in an attempt to get neutral grays from Lulu. I converted them to grayscale and heaven knows how they then compared to the original files. I suspect that many or maybe most of the images came from people who don’t have calibrated systems so the profile wouldn’t have helped much anyway. As a general rule, people tend to set their monitor brightness much higher than it should be.

Your images BTW are among the closest match from file/screen representation to printed book and I made no adjustments to yours from what you sent me to final version. There are many others, however, that in my opinion look very good and true to the files I received. If you order a book, you may disagree, but that is my perception.

I have learned a lot while doing this redo of the book and if doing it over, I would do a number of things differently. Even so, I think the current result is better than I expected.

Jerome

[eddie]

just for completeness, here's the direct link to the book:

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/257631


thanks for the link! i could not find it before. DOH!

i ordered mine today. i can not wait to see the pictures.

eddie

[Matus Kalisky]

My copy just arrived! I can hardly belive that I really hold it in my hands. The BW photos seems to have a weak blue tone - even thos that were originally slightly sepia toned (mine), but not enough to bother me or spoil my happiness :-)

I did not browse the PDF version before - I am amazed by the variety of work presented in this book. I slowly start to realize also the documentary meaning of it.

So let me shout out loud

- - - T H A N K - Y O U - G U Y S - - -

P.S - I hope it was not the last one

[photographs42]

My copy just arrived! I can hardly belive that I really hold it in my hands. The BW photos seems to have a weak blue tone - even thos that were originally slightly sepia toned (mine), but not enough to bother me or spoil my happiness :-)

I did not browse the PDF version before - I am amazed by the variety of work presented in this book. I slowly start to realize also the documentary meaning of it.

So let me shout out loud

- - - T H A N K - Y O U - G U Y S - - -

P.S - I hope it was not the last one

Matus,
I did put the new files into the book and in my copy they are slightly warm. It is very noticeable if I place them side by side with the first (test) version of the book. Also, as I mentioned before, the book has to cure. Try leaving the book open to your pages over night and see it they look different.
Jerome

[Remigius]

Hey,

I got my copy in hands now - and it's just brilliant! Thanks to all who contributed to this effort.

Cheers, Remigius.

[timbo10ca]

Got my copy today. F A N T A S T I C !!!!!! Thanks again guys!

Tim

[eddie]

got mine. looks great!

excellent work everyone.

i want to be in next time....if there is a next time....

eddie

[photographs42]

Thanks for picking this up, it looks great in the PDF.

It would be interesting if we could do a polling from the purchasers of the Blurb book about color consistency, tone of the greyscale images, print defects, etc. so we can get an idea of how good the quality control of Blurb truly is.

Frank,
Quite a few folks have received books now. Any ideas on how to implement your polling plan?

Jerome

[Frank Petronio]

Just set up a poll here with a new thread, it is self-explanatory or perhaps some kind quantitative MBA number-crunching soul can contribute the effort? I dropped math after Calc 4 nearly killed me in college, nvr did statistics.

Ask about satisfaction, for greyscale repro, color repro, and binding....

The comments, while not being statistically representative, will still be the most valuable -- the poll is sort of just an experiment, with such a small sample audience I wouldn't make too much of it other than broad strokes.

[photographs42]

I just noticed that our book made the Blurb “Staff Pick” list.
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/featured/21

Jerome