Got three ImageWrap books today - my opinions (not great)
I got three ImageWrap books today. Basically just order IW versions of my existing three ‘photoblog’ books for my mum as a birthday present. Here are my first impressions: 1) postage is still really shonky. The books arrived in one cardboard ‘envelope’ that had been torn open on two corners during it’s journey. I know this isn’t Blurb’s fault, but their packaging sucks. Apple and Photobox both take considerably better care of packaging their books so that inevitable box damage in the post doesn’t affect the books. My three Blurb books all have a bump on one corner. Not a great start. 2) the ImageWrap cover is at first glance impressive – I prefer the idea and basic look of it to a dust jacket, not least because the colours are much more accurate than the dust covers I’ve had so far (which had a green/magenta hint to them). However, actually LOOKING at the covers, I noticed smears across them from the printing process (faint ‘scratch’ effects in the colours, basically, presumably from where they rolled off the printers wet and dried badly). Also, while I guess I should have anticipated this, due to the fact that the image is indeed wrapped around the three outside edges of the book by a good 1/4 inch, the images AND the text on the front cover are noticeably closer to the visible edge than I’d like. Needs to be some way of countering this. 3) the white paper seal over the inside cover is unevenly attached to the hardback itself – across all three books not a single one is identically attached. Feels slipshod and amateurish. It’s a fine detail for sure, and not one most people would worry about, but I noticed it looking at three books at the same time, and it says to me that this is a process that hasn’t been finely honed before ‘going final’. 4) on one of the books, the first blank white page inside the book was actually stuck along the top edge to the glued down white inside cover. I’m going to have totake a very sharp knife and delicately slide it along the top edge when I get home to try and free it without ripping it. 5) The binding for these ImageWrap books is pretty ropey. While it’s not as bad as the frankly APPALLING glue binding of my 160-odd page hardbacks I got last year (see another thread of mine for details, where pages were falling out the second I unwrapped it), it’s basically a disaster waiting to happen. The 70-ish pages of each book have all been glued together at the edge as expected, but are held within the hard covers by virtue of one pageof white paper at each end of the book which are themselves ‘taped’ with some kind of fabric tape to the covers themselves. But there’s a good 1/4 inch gap between the cluster of pages and the inside spine of the book, which means the pages feel kind of loose within the binding and when opening the book and turning the pages audible cracks and creaks can be heard, leading me to suspect that too much use will result in the pages working loose of the rubbish glue and falling out in time. 6) finally, I swear that the dot matrix printing of these books has led to even less clarity of detail than in previous softback versions of the books but I will be checking that later. Again, not something most consumers wanting photobooks of their holidays will notice, but I can tell and I’m not happy about it as my photography is much more about the ‘fine art’ aspect. Overall, I’m really sorry to say that I’ve had it with Blurb.Out of several different products ordered in the last year, the only one I’ve felt was good quality, well printed and well bound, was the landscape softback. The hardback books have real binding issues, the covers are a constant headache of niggling quality issues that are down to bad printing and variable colour profiles, the packaging is poor and I’ve yet to have a hardback delivery I’m pleased with. I just can’t justify the good prices versus the less-than-acceptable appearance/binding of the hardback offerings, and as such I won’t be wasting my time with those products again, sadly. In the meantime I’ll probably send this post to their Customer Service division but as these books are meant to be a present to my mum this weekend, and she’ll probably not mind the issues too much, I won’t be sending them back for a reprint. Last time I got a reprint of a hardback it was actually worse than the original anyway. Sorry Blurb – Apple and Photobox will get my hardback custom in future. Why can they get it right while your chosen printers get it so absolutely TERRIBLY wrong? :(
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