My first book - Review and Pictures
I recently received my first book from Blurb. I ordered a 250-page 13×11 book. Below, some of my first impressions.
1. Overall – The book is excellent. Has a professional and bookstore-like appearance. Most of my expectations were met, some of them even surpassed. 
2. Dust jackect – I designed the cover on CS2, and used a full bleed layout on BookSmart. The letters of the title are not as sharp as they would had I used text entered from BookSmart, but that was expected, and it is not something serious. The paper is standard for dust jackets. On the back cover, I also used a full bleed picture, and both the back and front cover pictures advanced a third of an inch into the flaps. I had expected less of this effect. The back cover and a picture on the front flap are B&W, and they have a very distinct green cast.  
3. Binding – Has the appearance of being durable. The book has been handled by a dozen or so people, and some of them did not do it very carefully, but all the pages are still firm in place. 
4. Paper – Not glossy paper, but thick enough. A little transparent.
5. Alignment – The page numbers and headers are frequently misaligned. The distance from the page numbers to the bottom of the page varies a lot. The distance from the headers to the top of the pages varies by as much as an third of an inch. 
6. Image quality – Good. The resolution and sharpness is what was to be expected for a 175 lpi printer. There were no image defects or artifacts. The B&W images have a very subtle green cast, but it is hardly noticeable, which is certainly not the case with the pictures on the cover. The color pictures have very good saturation and contrast. In fact, they match almost perfectly the look they have on my monitor. I
have never really calibrated it, so I just got lucky, I guess…
Overall, I’m very pleased with the book. p.s. Someone asked in another thread what or how was the the last page. Before both the title and end pages( the one with the Blurb logo), there is a sheet of a different stock of paper, as can be seen in the pictures below:  
|
