I had a very prompt reply from Blurb that they decided to switch from side stitching on binding to "perfect" binding about a year ago.  Perfect binding is the cheapest lowest quality binding usually reserved for paperback books, not hardcovers.  In no way can it be described as bookstore quality, in my opinion. I am sad to learn of this intentional quality decline on Blurb’s part.

Best, Pam

I know what you mean, Pam. I was a little disappointed when the secure stitching stopped, and yes, the adhesive seems to have decreased. When I read your post I did a little online research on PUR perfect binding, and although, as you said, it seems to be used more for paperbacks than hard covers, most of what I read seemed to indicate that it is strong and durable.

I can’t imagine Blurb would use an inferior process to save a few cents (despite some other reservations I have had … see http://forums.blurb.com/forums/5/topics/13022 ). On the odd occasion that I have received books with printing errors that Blurb has replaced, out of curiosity I have tested to destruction the original books before I discarded them. I did so the other day, after reading your post, Pam. I am pleased to report that most pages tore before they came away from the binding, which indicates that the binding is stronger than the paper (which was premium lustre). I was very satisfied with the result.

I have received hundreds of books from Blurb and only ever once did I get one where the pages fell out (of course, it was replaced). On this occasion the strength of the binding was probably about 10% what it should have been, presumably due to equipment malfunction or operator error. But I wonder: can I assume that all my other books are 100% to specification, or are there some that are, say, 50% or 30% that I won’t discover for many years? I don’t intend to unnecessarily weaken the binding of every book I receive by testing its strength.

Unfortunately any company that uses relatively new technology has to be taken on trust with regard to longevity. If the pages of our books all start falling out in ten or twenty years, will Blurb still be around to take the blame?

But from what I can tell after my research and testing, I have no reason to think this will happen.

I did receive my two orders totalling 53 books, and of those, 35 were in the "perfect to acceptable" range, while 18 had the defect of the prior orders, only this time on the last page.  When I opened the book to that page, I could see back to the binding, and the ragged edge of the page showed, again making the binding look inferior.  True to their word, Blurb promptly agreed to refund the purchase price of those 18 books.  I have asked Blurb customer support to try to find out if there is a plan to fix this problem, and some detail about what that plan is, as well as timing.  I love Blurb as a company, have never had any quality problems from them until the last few orders, and am hoping for a  reason to wait it out and remain a Blurb customer. 

I can confirm that the glued binding is nothing like as good as it ought to be. I spent many months assembling a family photo album as a present for my family – this involved painstaking cleaning and restoration of hundreds of photos from the last 150 years- and I looked at many printing services to see who offered the best quality service. I couldn’t find any that offered the stitched binding that I would have thought essential for the big heavy book this was going to be but Blurb had the best reviews.
After all those months of work and over £100 spent on a book that I wanted to last for generations, the binding split after just weeks of careful handling. Heartbreaking.