BookSmart Issue: Book opening VERY slowly in BookSmart
I have produced a book over the last few weeks in BookSmart. This book has approx 120 pages and 180 images in it. All was running well until yesterday evening – I left my (Windows) PC while I went to eat and when I returned Booksmart was running very slowly. Now it takes over half an hour for Booksmart to open. I opened the file and did a ‘save as’ (as was recommended in another Forum post) and this seems to have made it even slower. This is very annoying as it is the culmination of a project involving over 30 photographers; However I don’t think I have the heart to re-make the book if the answer is that this is a corrupt file. Does anyone have any suggestions?
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Also (forgot to mention this) – Booksmart uses almost all the processor power while it is loading VERY SLOWLY (it’s still opening) – 15 mins after my last message.
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I’m having the same exact problem. I sent a message into support a couple days ago, and I’m waiting for a response. My book currently has only 26 pages, but I’ve loaded about 400+ photos into the project, I’m just waiting (for the application to respond) so I can place them. I’m thinking it could be two things: 1) I just upgraded to the most recent version of BookSmart 2) I’m installed windows desktop indexing. So, I uninstalled the indexing, which had made everything run better. But BookSmart is still hanging. I don’t know if I can find a previous version of BookSmart. Maybe it’s the 1.8.1…. version that has an issue. Please post something here if you solve your dilemma. I NEED to get this wedding book done. -Monica
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Dear Strawblue and Monica,
Not to worry, your books aren’t corrupt. If your book opens it is intact. We had discovered a bug in our latest build of software that can cause books to open very slowly especially as the size of the book increases. Fixing this bug has been a focus for our new version of BookSmart.
BookSmart 1.9 promises to be one of the most comprehensive versions we’ve released to date and will include numerous feature enhancements that I can’t even begin to list here, along with an assortment of bug fixes.
Due to the comprehensive nature of the next version, we’re planning on a prospective release date sometime in September. This might be a bit longer than you had hoped for, and I apologize for the inconvenience. The new version will be available on our site and then you should be on your way to bookmaking in no time.
Best regards,
-Ben
Senior Technical Support Specialist
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Hi Ben,
I thought that the BookSmart 1.9 has been released. But then I re-read the info in this particular forum discussion, I realized that I read too quickly. Well, I was excited that “1.9” is out. BUT I was darn wrong. I guess I should be a bit at least patience. LOL
I agree with you, Ben, that the next release app must be examined, test throughly on all across type of platforms to ensure that it runs effectively and productively. Perhaps that you want to test slowest, oldest platform to ensure compatibility issue as well. As you know, because there are some people out there still use or operate that darn old system per se. ;)
Anyway, I look forward to next release. I hope that it allows PDF to be imported too from InDesign or PhotoShop even Aperture. But I don’t think it is reasonable feature at this stage of software engineering development at this time.
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this might be a "duh" question…but… Any books we create will transfer to the new version cleanly right? Its just an update not an overhaul…so as such, we won’t lose books in process right?
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Hello Brian,
We are working very hard on this new release and definitely take all the feedback and product suggestions very seriously. All I can say is stay tuned.
Forevertues, the new version will definitely accept all the books you have made in BookSmart 1.8. Infact, Booksmart is designed in a modular manner so that uninstalling or upgrading BookSmart doesn’t affect your books. Deleting books must be done in a very conscious deliberate manner.
-Ben
Senior technical Support Specialist
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Hi, I have the same problem. But I can’t wait for the next version of BookSmart. Can we use an older version, and where can we download it? Thanks!
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Just an fyi, that you are probable well aware of, I’m running into the same issues on the mac side, on a new powerbook. thank you, lookng forward to the new release!
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Whitelotus,
If you have some kind of technical problem with your situation, I strongly recommend that you file a feedback or provide an informative input by submitting technical contact form through Blurb contact forms. Please use this venue. With your feedback sent to the Blurb team, the better communication with feedback and inputs from all of us as participants or blurb consumers. Like you, I am a participant helping other participants. But I can’t help you with some kind of technical remedies.
So, use the contact form, please.
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I’m having similar problems—it’ll work for a few minutes then freeze up my entire computer. I had 2 hours tonight to try to finish the book I’m working on (72 pages, lots of photos) and I’ve spent one hour just trying to get past the first few changes. Changed to my more powerful computer (Windows XP), no help. VERY frustrating. I’ve been recommending Booksmart to my friends, but no more. I’m totally frustrated.
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I am having the same issue trying to make my first book, but i have only finished the cover adn the title page…just getting the book to open takes about an hour. once it finally opens actions take at least 10 minutes a piece…even to just change text…. i needed to have this done by tomorrow (just a proof book) but its lookin like no hope there
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Please, who has an older version of BookSmart for Windows? I lost mine. (I’m very pleased with the books I made earlier with Blurb, but this latest beta version is terrible.) litotes@planet.nl Thanks!
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Hi, Dominique in Tuscany. I made my first books in June, great ! But no, after upgrading, same problems: slow opening and slower lay out system. It was easier bewfore… Can we reload the older version ?
:)
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don’t know if this helps, but I am doing a 8×10 landscape book, and all was well until I got to about 60pages, and Booksmart ground to a halt! There are lots of photos, so not sure if that is the issue. Maybe the book fits in RAM ( I have 2Gigs on my Mac Mini) until it gets to a certain size, then it has to page in and out of disk files, hence the glacial performance? Just an idea …..
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is the new booksmart 1.9 going to be available for windows?
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Of course!
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I have a problem not only with slow working with booksmart. I tried to export my 190pages book maybye 20 times and it does’t works :-(
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I gave up on a book about 20 pages long because it locked up. I figured I’d done something wrong, but couldn’t find any specific instructions on moving pictures or text. I then re-installed 1.8.1 . I started over, thinking I’d done something wrong in deleting and moving pictures. I spent all <code>##</code> weekend removing the second try and re-installing 1.8.1 again. Once again I totally rebuilt the book. I got it done with 36 pages and about 30 pictures…now the damned thing won’t load at all. That’s 3 books, folks. I’m reminded of this "Beta" thing, thinking about how Microsoft dumps programs on the market figuring the public’s time is valueless as they plod through the flawed flow diagrams and report back to MS…. I’m looking for a different product now. I can’t tell you how disappointing that loss of 5 days of work was. You see, when I was a machine language computer program specialist back in the early 60’s, our programs WORKED when we released them. Witness the Apollo Program upon which I personally worked and the binary missile guidance test programs I wrote for the Hound-Dog, B-52 system for SAC. Don’t release a program w/o completely testing all the loops. I don’t care HOW many lines of code you have to write, DON’T release the program until someone has tested all the loops.
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having the same issue. about to loose my mind or at least strike my mac. have maybe 30 images I am working with and every little step takes FOREVER!!!! it takes away all the fun I was having :-(
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I’ve given up trying with this version. Anyone have any clue when the update version will be coming out? I’m wondering if I just need to move on to a different place or wait it out.
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I have uninstalled this program 3 times. The second time I went to the hard drive and found out that the BookSmart Uninstall program doesn’t uninstall much of anything. It leaves sub-directories and all kinds of stuff in the main BookSmart Directory. For the uninitiate, that is like telling the clerk to go remove and SHRED the contents of the drawer, and finding out that the clerk casually walked over and erased the name on the front of the drawer. When you are dealing with a program that corrupts itself (this one does, because at first it works), the only way you can possibly finish your project is to "uninstall," then "reinstall." That would put the original progam in place. So this program is for all practical purposes like my grandson, who fouled his diaper just today. He couldn’t change it himself. My conclusion in this matter: "Veni, Vedi, Fugi" (I came, I saw, I left).
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Same here, I did one book successfully, loved the quality. But on this second book the software has given me so much trouble I’m taking it to Lulu.
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I’ve been working on my book since January. This project means the world to me and I have spent hours scanning old letters and photos for my book. I was at over 100 pages and now it isn’t loading. I am so frustrated. I hope the problem is fixed soon. I am tempted to try and find another company to work with, but I really don’t feel like re-doing everything.
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Last week I uploaded the latest version of my book. I received confirmation of successful upload, and then notice that the book has been shipped. Over the weekend I’ve been trying to make final corrections so I can place my first real order of 20 books. Instead of functioning, this is what I get:
1) book title appears in list of books to open, but thumbnail of front cover does not
2) book takes about half an hour to open
3) I can change/update text and delete photos BUT
4) cannot replace photos I have deleted with newer, SMALLER versions of same photo that I imported with <get photos>
The error message I get is a cutesy "Hiccup, Hiccup – Booksmart has to close – Apologies"
That has now happened 12 times without any further progress on the book. I have a deadline. In my view, Blurb has been more than unresponsive, Blurb is being irresponsible! MacBook Pro, 4Gb of ram!
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Booksmart is operating so slow that I get to do a command once every 5 minutes! Please fix this ASAP. I love Blurb but can no longer make any books until this is fixed!
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We have a 300 page book that on two occassions we were within one hour of sending in. Yet, booksmart either freezes up or moves so slowly we can no longer proceed! And, we get no help from technical support.
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I am glad to here there will be an improved BookSmart. I too, am running into this slow opening problem. My book is 116 pages and lots of photos! The good thing is it’s saved and I am glad to hear that we can open our books from 1.8 in 1.9. I can wait! However, there is a coupon code that is good now. Will it be good still?
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Tech support is worse than no help. They have no workaround suggestions, and no explanation for what’s going on here. All you get is corporate platitudes thanking you for being patient and flexible. I am neither. It’s almost as though the BookSmart application has some malicious code that disables it once you reach a certain date. One clue: OS 10.4.10 Activity Monitor shows that BookSmart is trying to use 130% of my CPU’s capacity. That’s right, 130%! No wonder it freezes.
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New version release date?? I am dying like all the rest here! I have about 6 months vested in my book..wanted to get around 30 made for Christmas. Maybe that will get Blurb moving.
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I’ve had similar problems, and glad to hear it is not just me. However I have had moderate success by exporting the book and saving under a different name, then Importing. The imported version seems to work faster.
It may be coincidental, but worked for me. chris
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I am working on my first book, and within one day, after finishing the Cover…my book wont open. I just get a computer freeze. I was rather excited about getting this book done, however now i am just frustrated. I have a deadline, that cannot wait for Blurb to get thier act together. I think i will take my business elsewhere.
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I’m in the same boat. I have several books I am working on but can not get into them. Does anyone know the New version release date? Will it be posted here, or where shall we look for the info? Your help would be appreciated. Lina
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I’m also having this problem (on PC). It’s using over 500MB of RAM for no good reason and totally kills my machine. I’ve started a new book and it’s starting to look like it will go the same way – when I open it up it’s 120MB then if I do some work or just leave it open it grows to over 300MB. there are some serious memory leak issues in this version. (1.8.1)
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Add me to the list of disappointed customers considering moving to a different book-making service (one of the others I had thought wasn’t quite as good as blurb). I even sent my computer to the shop and spent money on upgrades thinking my computer was the problem! However, if the 50% off coupon is extended a month to make up for this lost month, then I’ll stay with blurb, at least for this book. I’d spent hours on my 100 page book about my baby’s first two years.
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Hi everyone, Just started to use blurb and I have to say not impressed at present especially after reading about slow opening etc. I have just put together a few photos of a recent holiday which I wanted to send to my family. Two points; gave up after waiting 15 minutes for it to open today – not a good sign; and secondly no idea how to get the link with flickr to work – more minor but annoying. Hope the next version sorts out slowness and is released soon else I will not be using blurb. Ade
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I have just started creating my first book as well. Same thing as everyone else. I got to almost 20 pages, stopped and took a break, then when I went to reopen, the booksmart program will not open my book. My computer just sits. I went to my "End Task" list and it indicated that the program was "not responding". I thought maybe my pictures were too big, but after reading this, I guess I’ll assume its the program and not my pictures. Is that the right thing to do, or should I try again with new sized pictures?
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Lauren3042,
Did the BookSmart give you some error message in particular? Do your computer have enough memory? Large hard drive space? Do you run other applications running “in the background” and you run BookSmart app at the same time? If so, try to quit ALL other apps running, quit Booksmart (either force it to quit) and shut down the computer. Reboot and run BookSmart only.
See if that suggestion help, no? If nothing else is working, perhaps that you want to file a technical support. To do this, go from here:
http://www.blurb.com/help/technical_support
In that turn to provide tech support information about your problem, be sure to provide specific root of your problem, what exact steps did you try to achieve the tasks in BookSmart, and all tidbit related to your computer and be very specific about Operating System versions, size of memory, hard drive space, RAM size, and all that.
Hope that helps.
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Can anyone use v1.8 and create a book?? I’m new to this and tried but my PC dies at about page 20. I brought my work laptop home (it has 2GB of ram) but it dies around page 30. So it helped a bit. From reading these forums it seems like booksmart is the problem and we have to wait for v1.9. Too bad they don’t fix 1.8 so people can create and order books while we sit and wait. I’ve been waiting for 2 weeks now. I had to have my wedding album complete before a trip so my relatives could see it so i used another online site which isn’t quite as fancy but actually allows you to complete a project and order it. I would like to complete my Blurb book and compare the two then create a 3rd with any fixes.
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Just last week I managed to work on about 100 pages in one day without any problems and today when i went back to continue working on my book, it won’t let me make any changes to the photos and text! And the bar with a small view of all the pages that used to be at the bottom, is now hidden on top. I can only view the pages.. but not do anything! This is really frustrating.. and the idea of having to go back and redo everything just really blows!
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Ok folks at Blurb…. sometime in September is almost out of time… We’ve been waiting for the new 1.9 version that is suppose to work with Vista… shall I just find another site ? Any suggestiions for a site that does 8×10 or 8 1/2×11 portrait style books ? SwimPhotoMom
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Here’s an update: We’re working on the new release of BookSmart ‘round the clock at this point, testing it and doing everything possible to ensure that the release is the best BookSmart it can be. As we’ve said before, we cannot list an exact date when it’ll make its appearance, but know that it’ll be here very, very soon. We know how anxious the folks in the Forums are to receive the next version of BookSmart. The second it’s available, you will be the first to know. -Allison
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Blurb Team – It’s October, and still no v1.9. While I’m new to this problem, it’s no less serious. I have a customer waiting on a book that I can’t finish because suddenly it won’t open. As Lauren3042 said, "it just sits" but the interface goes grey. The problem came out of nowhere; one day it worked, the next it didn’t. I’m using XP on a fast gaming machine, but when I try to open my current book project (672MB, 120 or so pages) BookSmart freezes and CPU consumption shoots to 100%, pretty much killing my entire session. Turning off background apps doesn’t help. The only difference between my current draft and my last draft is about 10 pages of text and 8 or so images, but the "regional book.backup" and "regional book.book" files shot up from 1.2MB to 22MB. If 1.9 isn’t ready yet, please let us know where we can get 1.8. Chuck
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Same witI me I shut everything down and started my book all over again. I had written 28 pages of text – very liitle about 5 lines on each page and loaded 28 photos when the whole thing froze after I clicked ‘add page’ Now the whole thing is frozen – wont save etc. It’s been like this for 2 HOURS !!!!
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I have had the same exact problem. Working on my book for over five months with absolutely no glitches at all. Then .. all of sudden last weekend it stopped working .. and i did NOT add any images or text . If i had not saved several backup copies all would be lost because once the book tries to open and does not, the file corrupts! my book is 200 pages at this point and 950 photos.
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This might help. Im on a Mac using the 1.8 version of Booksmart. My problems began today when i began adding some text and titles. The software began running very slowly and impossible to work with taking ages to open. Also i noticed that i was getting lots of little yellow alert symbols which either means your image is too low res or that it cant fit all the text on the page. I just removed all the page titles and realized that it had somehow duplicated my text about 10x although i couldnt see it as the font was white on a white page. The software is running fine now and i have replaced the titles and made sure there is no ghost text. This might help some of you. It helped me. Good luck.
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I too, am very very very very frustrated and displeased!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have customers and over 15 manuscripts to produce. I was able to complete one book and no photos for only 28 pages and 31 on the other book. These are children books which require high graphics and resolution photos. I can not add photos or write and more text because the book freezes in your booksmart 1.8….. program. It saves and i can’t open. It freezes my entire system, i have reloaded over 20 times. I am very disappointed, frustrated and annoyed most of the day for the last several days. I am new to Booksmart, as well….... I am seeking other programs with no success, so when is the new version going to be available? It is now, October 6…........ ............. I wrote technical support 5 days ago and no response…..............................Please advise!
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I just wanted to add my name to the list of complaints about this arbitrary freezing issue. And I want to convey to Blurb that if you are creating software and are aware of a specific bug, don’t address the bug by creating an entirely new version of the software application. Fix that bug first, and then build the new version. A software overhaul is too blunt an instrument to fix a small isolated problem. Or so I presume; perhaps the whole program simply doesn’t work, but I doubt that. Also, in trying to determine where the issue might be, I tried opening my previous books, and they seem to function perfectly fine. This leads me to believe that my new book’s file IS actually corrupted. This is quite devastating, even for someone like me who hadn’t been working that long on it. My sympathies to those who’ve put weeks and months into their work. October 8, 2007 10:40 AM…tick…tick…tick…tick…
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OK, BLURB. TODAY IS MONDAY OCTOBER 8, 2007. YOU HAVE QUITE A FEW DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS ON YOUR HANDS BECAUSE OF THE SOFTWARE ISSUE WITH VERSION 1.8. A LOT OF US HAVE BOOKS THAT WE’VE BEEN WORKING ON FOR QUITE A LONG TIME THAT WE CAN NO LONGER OPEN WITH THIS VERSION OF YOUR SOFTWARE. I THINK WE DESERVE AN UPDATE ON EXACTLY WHEN THIS NEW VERSION IS GOING TO BE MADE AVAILABLE TO US. IF IT’S NOT SOON, YOU’RE GOING TO LOSE A LOT OF CUSTOMERS OVER THIS. BLUEMAX2
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I’d really like to know the time frame for this, I’d really like to finish my project with your service. Can you guys update us on the progress asap?
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