There is a lot of dissatisfaction in the forums
Blurb.
Please respond.
There is an awful lot of dissatisfied customers in your forums. I was a potential customer up to reading this feedback. I will not be ordering any of your products unless you can produce some encouraging statistics and/or policies that address this dissatisfaction.
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Just make a book, have it printed, and decide for yourself. The printing and binding is Blurb’s responsibility, the photos are yours. Most of the complaints deal with photo guality. If you soft proof, you will see exactly what is printed. Soft proofing would alleviate probably 75% of the complaints on these forums. In general, with any company, dissatisfied customers are much, much more vocal than satisfied customers. Why would I come on this board to say, "It looks great". Why would anyone else care? Blurb has good customer service, and will fix any of their printing or binding mistakes. My brief experience with their customer service was that it was slow, but that was a year ago, and hopefully they’ve sped it up. Bruce has always been available, here, and on other forums in the past. If you don’t want to use Blurb, try Viovio, Lulu or Walmart. Be prepared to pay 2-4x more for the first two (for slightly better or similar quality), and be prepareed to puke at the quality of the later. ViVio and Lulu both have more options available, so that may be a plus for you.
In my experience, I love the 8×10 print quality. The 7×7 print quality is not what I’d like. Most people don’t notice, but I do. I probably won’t do any more 7×7s. Your mileage may vary.
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I’d encourage ajwiberg to try doing a book with Blurb, as well….I’ve had only good experiences- in print and binding quality and tech support.
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I’ve printed one 7×7 book and generally liked it. The pictures aren’t anywhere close to what I get from my SmugMug prints, but still the book and page quality was very good. My problem is that their software is beyond terrible. I’ve tried 4 projects and always end up throwing away hours of work and using one of the other services (e.g. lulu) because the Booksmart software is extremely slow and does not do a good job of processing the pictures. I would definately print with Blurb if I could use some other software to create the book. I won’t put up with Booksmart any longer. Refer to the following post for more information. http://forums.blurb.com/users/48248/posts#posts-8228
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Hi ajwiberg, I had an awesome experience with blurb. I ordered 5 8×10 photo books with my wedding pictures for family members’ christmas gifts, just in time to get caught up in the holiday rush. I did spend quite a bit of time on booksmart, and it was frustrating at times. However my computer is OLD and SLOW. I found when I tried the program on a different computer it was much easier, so the problem was not entirely booksmart’s fault. Blurb upgraded my shipping when they weren’t able to print my books in time, without me having to complain first, which was awesome. There was a huge glitch on UPS’s part with the shipping, the tracking information told me my package would not arrive until Dec. 26th, when it did in fact show up on the 24th. (Sorry any blurb staff who read my email complaining about the shipping… my fault and UPS’s fault, not yours) The books are great quality, look professional, and are exactly what I was hoping for. I will definitely use blurb again, and I have recommended it to friends and family members who were impressed at my book. Overall I would rate my experience with blurb as excellent. -Customer service responded quickly and professionally, and anticipated my needs and the needs of other customers. I was impressed. -Book is of high quality, nicely bound, thick pages. The print quality is great, my photos are perfect. -booksmart can be frustrating at times when you are working on a slower, older machine, but I worked through it and in the end it was worth the time it took. Hope this was useful information :)
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I had been playing around with the Blurb program for a year or so, and finally decided before Christmas to try a short (28-page, hardback) project as a gift. The other ideas I have in mind are much larger and more complicated, so I decided something simple would be better for a first-timer. I used old, scanned photos, as well as good digital pictures to work with. Once I made up my mind to get it done, I was able to stop fighting with the software and just learn how to use it. I have to say that my experience as a beginner was very positive, even through the last-minute Christmas rush (the book was printed and arrived on schedule as promised). I read the forum discussions to search for tips and suggestions. As a consumer, I tend to ignore those unhappy customers at the extreme end of the scale, since I usually don’t have the benefit of knowing all of the details (or "the rest of the story" for those of us who are old enough to remember Paul Harvey). I will be uploading my next book in a few days, which is a bigger project than the first one. I’m optimistic that I will be as satisfied with this second one as I was with the first one. I’m thrilled that print-on-demand has become available on the consumer level, and I’m sure it will continue to expand as technology develops.
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I just received my first Blurb book and I am in love with it! The quality was great and I’m really pleased with how it looks. Just a note for all those complaining about the book smart software: I completed my book in Photoshop, saved each page as a jpeg and then placed it in booksmart as a full page photo. Just make sure your text isn’t too close to the edge of your page and you are good to go. This saved a lot of hassle and I had all of the Photoshop functionality.
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I have to say that I am happy. I did one book so far, and it had some minor problems on the proof copy. Customer support was excellent, the new copies came back and are perfect. And color wise I am quite happy (I have a calibrated monitor) I think Blurb is not yet a mass-production company, and the paper they use could be more "photographic", but so far, so good. I am absolutely OK at sending the book to people CIao, Marco.
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I am very satisfied with the print quality of both photos and text. The only complaint that I have is the inability to justify text format. Otherwise, I love the app, service, and product. Thanks, Luis
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I’m with ttluigi. I think Blurb is doing a great job, but I sure wish that we could justify text on the right. Makes for a cleaner body of text visually speaking.
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Hey Keith (cantudoit2) there is a Right Justify tool on the button bar when you are inside a text box. (Along with Left and Center Justify) There is also a (very basic) line spacing tool.
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Thanks Glenlan…...But what I meant was that I want to have both left and right justified in the same body of text. It seems to me, unless I’m mistaken that the software allows either left, center or right justification, but not, for example Both left and right. I’m using a previous version of Booksmart so I may not be up to date on what’s possible at the moment….. There’s also a basic leading tool, but no kerning as yet in Booksmart….......Keith
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Keith, I have found that I can both left and right justify in the same text box, but not on the same line. Just hilight the section of text and click on the justify tool. Glen
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I just got my first book and couldn’t be happier. I ordered an 8×10 and the quality is excellent. The pictures are beautiful. And I really don’t understand all the complaints about the software. Worked great for me.
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Glen….Thanks for advising me of that- I will certainly try it!....Keith
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The difference between a good looking binding, and a binding that has come away from the pages is about two weeks of showing it to customets. NOT HAPPY BLURB!!!
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EXO, Judging from all your posts, it appears you’re never happy. In fact, it looks like you’re a chronic whiner! If you’re so upset with Blurb why bother with them? Get someone else to print your books and save yourself all this grief, and the rest of us from having to read your consistantly unpleasant posts.
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Hello, Just wanted to toss in my two cents as a lifelong perfectionistic… I just received my first book from Blurb yesterday, which was an 11×13 book of our wedding photos, and I will say that I was STUNNED and THRILLED at the quality of the resulting product. Granted, the photos were huge (4000-6000 pixels in either direction), so it is probably unlikely that they would reproduce poorly in print, but every other aspect of the product (the glossy cover, paper quality, text printing, binding, etc) was also top-notch and definitely bookstore quality as advertised. I was a bit concerned myself after ordering and then proceeding to check out the forums and find a lot of dissatisfaction here, as noted. But Blurb has totally met or exceeded my expectations. My next project is an 8×10 book in which I hope to collect most, if not all, photos taken of my family’s much-missed dog, who passed in 2000 at age 14. I now believe that Blurb will reproduce these photos with style and quality, and I would not allow anything less when it comes to preserving my family’s memories of our wonderful girl. Nice work, Blurb!
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One other thought from my last post – after receiving this book, I wish I had not paid the money to have our photographers create our wedding album. Judging from the silly process they have me going through for album creation (limit 10 pictures to a section – 70 pics total; please! – on what color background, etc.), I wish I had saved the money and just done it myself through Blurb since their quality is so high (and I very much enjoy the bookmaking process anyway).
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At this moment I have two books in reprint. The European printer is not up to par, so they say. The European printer should be shut down for urgent repair. Reprints should be done in the US. This printer seems ok. Gerlach.
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I have to add to this conversation…. I recently received an 8×10 softcover, who’s binding was a bit off, and after a few weeks, pages did come out. BUT….. I contacted Blurb, and within a week of my initial complaint, I had a new copy of the book in my hands, at Blurb’s cost, and the binding on the new book is fine!! So I guess you just have to be patient with them…... And as far as problems with the software…maybe they have upgraded the software, because I thought it worked fine…...
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iliv4bears,
Please note that Blurb Booksmart IS still a beta version. As I understand that Blurb team are working on Booksmart, however I do not know for sure as in “when”. All I know is sometime in middle of 2008 – that is all I know of and to my best of knowledge.
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