Anyone get a Blurb B3 book yet?

[Frank Petronio]

So the POD saga continues... I signed up for Blurb's B3 "professional" color-managed workflow for their on-demand books.

Has anyone done a Blurb book under the B3 program yet? And if so, how are the grayscale images?

I'm going to go pound a few nails in my head before I get started in freaking BookSmart again....

[Dirk Rösler]

Yes, we have just finished one and it looks fine. I have another non-B3 version on its way to compare and see if it is worth the extra $$$. Used the premium paper though, but haven't seen their standard paper.

However, the book is a collaboration and while I took care with calibration and careful tuning, my collaborator didn't, at least not to the same extent, and the results look indistinguishable as far as the grays are concerned - go figure.

The only gripe is that the book doesn't come even close to the 10x8 source... but that is expectable.

And yes, Book-frigging-Smart, aaargh

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/479941/

[Michael Rosenberg]

Frank,

I did the hard bound 11x13 edition of my book (Transition: The American Tobacco Factory - link is on my web site) in the B3 work flow. In my opinion the B3 workflow is not worth it for black and white prints. I have had some batches come out fine, and others come out with a magenta cast. I have had soft cover books printed by their Seattle plant a couple of times, and the books came out with no cast; but, books printed in their NE plant always seems to have some magenta cast. You cannot request printing in one plant or another. If you warm the images slightly the magenta cast is not noticeable. The cover is another matter - that is done on a different press, and there seems to be no color correction at all on the cover.

The only value to the B3 process in my opinion is that they will reprint the book if you have issues of the print tones.

I did my page design in CS2, put my images and plate numbers, then dropped the jpg image into a full bleed page in Booksmart. That gave me more control over how pages would appear, and more choice of text.

Mike

[gareth]

Thanks much for posting your experience with B3. We're still actively refining the service (it's in "charter" mode) so this kind of feedback is really helpful. Building a scalable, color managed POD workflow can be tricky business.

Michael, as you noted, people should contact Blurb for reprints if there's a printing problem (that goes for standard books and Custom Workflow) - we want you to be happy with the final result.

One final note - we're making a couple of adjustments this week we think will help with the softcover (cover) cast that sometimes crops up (that device is profiled but gets off calibration more quickly than the HP Indigos used for interior pages).

Thanks again for the feedback.

Best,
Gareth
Blurb

[Frank Petronio]

Dang how did they find this so fast?

Number One Issue: I want an InDesign/PDF workflow, none of this JPG/Booksmart stuff.

[Dirk Rösler]

Dang how did they find this so fast?

Referrals in their web server logs from my link to the Blurb book store.

Agree on the PDF workflow. If you do a pro version of the product like B3, why not go all the way and let the people who can use better tools than the consumer front end...

Dirk

[Preston]

I am considering creating a 'sample' book with color images and I just took a look at the Blurb site. It looks interesting, but I have a few questions for users of the service...

1. If you're doing color, how would you rate the quality of the reproductions and the readability of text?
2. How would you rate their customer service, shipping, etc.?
3. Is their software 'user-friendly'?
4. Any other info that I might find useful?

Thanks, all,

-P

[Michael Rosenberg]

Preston,

I have not printed a book in color, but I had purchased Huntington Witherill's book. I would say that the book was extremely good, and he did not use B3 (personal communication). Text was very readable. All of his design work was done with InDesign.

The customer service and shipping was exceptional.

The software is very user-friendly, and I would advise you to read some of the tips in the help section and those of other users on their web site. I made all of my image pages in CS2 because I wanted a particular look and a simple graphic. I saved the images as a jpg, and then dropped them into their template for a full page bleed. That also allowed me to create two different sized books without having to recreate all of the pages. I am very pleased with how my book turned out.

Hard cover: http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/304181

Soft cover: http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/282976

Mike

[Sean Galbraith]

I haven't tried B3 yet, but have generally been happy with the quality of the blurb books I've made. Would be really nice, though, if they would make downloadable, up to date, printer profiles available.

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/148952

[Henry Ambrose]

Number One Issue: I want an InDesign/PDF workflow, none of this JPG/Booksmart stuff.

Yes! The jpg method is doomed from the get-go for demanding users. Accepting .pdfs will be a much better solution for advanced users. The front end shouldn't matter, Quark or InDesign -- just take .pdfs.

Blurb: Pretend you're a regular printer and give professional or advanced designer folks the color profile and usual page dimension info to work with.