Ordering and Shipping
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Blurb raised prices. you should have gotten an email about it. I agree it’s unfortunate, but, that’s how it goes, I guess. |
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I’m sorry, but this is getting ridiculous. Blurb increased the cost of my 10×8 120 page landscape book six months ago, from £16.95 to £20.95. As soon as that happened, guess what? Sales of the book dropped to zero. So instead of Blurb receiving an extra £4 a book as they were planning, they got absolutely nothing. No sales. Zilch. Now they sneakily (and I’ve had no email about it) increase the price per book by another pound! Do they actually want people to sell books, or do we have to exercise our rights as consumers and look elsewhere for book publishing? And all this comes when I’m a matter of weeks away from uploading a 160 page sequel. Which probably won’t sell. Nice one Blurb. |
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I also remarked a price raise. Did I pay in april €95,- for a book of max. 120 pages (which should be about €80,- for a book of max. 80 pages), now I had to pay €87,- for a book of max. 80 pages. So that’s an increase of €7,- (almost 9%) in 1,5 month! All prices included premium paper lustre, Image Wrap, tax, shipping priority etc. For example there’s now €2,50 extra for white end paper sheets, which was the standard in the beginning of april. This is too much! And I don’t understand why. Blurb has good quality, but there’re still points of improvement: - The first point is the paper. This premium paper has worse quality than the standard paper from i.e. CEWE. The paper is thin, you see every finger on it and dust sticks to the paper. - The second point is the sharpness of the pictures. I see a lot of pixels in my book, even if the pictures contain a good resolution. - The third point is the print of the Image Wrap. The colours of the Image Wrap on the outside are much worse than the colours inside. The colours inside are quite good, that’s a stark pint of Blurb. If these improvements are made, than Blurb has a good reason to increase the price. But without these improvements, no. |
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And once again, within the space of a few short months, Blurb have put the prices up again, by £2 a copy! Again, no email with an advance warning or any explanation has been received. My 160 page 10×8 landscape book which I published last month was on sale for a rediculous £26.95, and I’ve had to apologise to potential buyers about the price, which doesn’t include P&P. Now it’s £28.95 for a softback book! I shall be taking my business elsewhere. Customer service is absolutely awful when it comes to keeping people posted about price rises. Blurb – People wallets are not bottomless pots of gold. There is still a recession on you know. |
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yes, i have just been hit with this rise in prices today – just uploaded my book to find out its an extra £3.00 since a month ago when i last had a book of similar spec done, and of course shipping has risen from £3.99 flat rate to £6.99 so what last month cost me £20.95 for the book and £3.99 shipping – total £24.94 per book, is now £23.95 + £6.99 shipping = £30.94 per book an icrease of £6.00 per unit for me to have a book in my hands. This is terrible business from Blurb, it is even worse than Ebay for upping charges every five minutes! Blurb’s rate of inflation is faster than anything!!! Shocking. I will deffo be looking to print future books elsewhere from now on, as someone else said here, it is an embarresment to our customers where we have to keep apologising for price rises!! Sort it out Blurb. |
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Like the rest of you I was unaware of the price hikes, plus the higher shipping costs, until I read this thread. Since the previous increase I’ve only ordered when there’s been a decent discount so haven’t been placing many orders and not been paying much attention either – especially since finding out how to publish my work as ebooks using Mobipocket or Smashwords who don’t expect me to purchase a copy in order to sell my ebooks. Could this explain why recently we’ve had so many offers of 25% discounts … do I detect a slight hint of desperation? Does it mean that sales have fallen? My online sales have certainly dived. For future Blurb publications I’ll only be using the Trade Book formats – my customers can’t afford anything else. It’s such a pity as I’ve always been delighted with Blurb foto books when the price was right. Wendy |
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Wendy, as far as I know the "discounts" you mention are for the author not the public. This tells me that blurb is not interested in selling books to the public, just getting money from the author who published with blurb. |
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Yes, CoburnBooks, you’re quite correct, discounts are for authors not the public. However, they work in two ways; a) they encourage the public to become authors which means a possible sale of at least one book, maybe 3 to take advantage of the basic shipping rate, and b) they encourage existing authors who place volume orders and sell direct to the public or to retailers. It’s the latter that has allowed me to make a small profit. This has been wiped out by the new price and shipping hikes but the new 25% discount and volume order discount might just make up for this (haven’t done the figures yet), and during the brief time I’ve used Blurb I’ve never known such a generous discount being offered so frequently. BTW, I’ve been able to sell books thru’ a retailer without an ISBN (think this is being discussed elsethread). Wendy
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You neglected to mention how they changed the paper options so now you have to pay extra for some things that were included gratis before. Its quite frustrating |
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AND now they’re charging an additional ‘BOOK TAX’?!?!?!? |
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I’ve been doing blurb books for a long time, as quality vs price balance and program friendlyness was a good one. With this price increase, I’m considering another options, like iphoto books, which I think is a big blurb competitor. Have you seen the smart photo autoflow and beautiful layouts of iphoto books? |
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I was happily going to buy 3 of my books today at $4.95 each. But to my surprise and chagrin the book is now $6.95 plus a stupd "book tax" of over $2.00 and $11+ shipping. Intrinsic value Economics 101 gentlemen. Propensity to consume 101 also. No one will buy at this price. I have been always pleased with the quality of my books but this has knocked me out of the market – sorry. |
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Gentlemen – you have priced me and I am sure many others out of your market. Your books with this recent price increase is outrageous and your shipping costs are obscene. Economics 101 Price Elasticity – I’m afraid you have found the price at which consumers will not buy. |
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Just had a look on mypublisher . My latest 80 page book would cost a eye watering $80 against £30 here . The big issue is comparison with high street prices and Blurb is taking itself out of any competition . I think on line publisher could absolutely shake up books , revolutionise them . Surely economies of scale must come into this , more books bought , printers running more , cost savings . Time to change |
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Yes the price increase is a killer. I started a book at a $15.95 price 3 years ago. In summer last year the price was the same $15.95. By summer this year it briefly paused at $17.95 and now is $19.95. I just cannot move my little project at a 25% increase along with a default shipping option that is far too expensive and premium for what I need. I probably ordered 200+ books in addition to my direct sales with Blurb since I started with them in 2007. I could swallow that kind of increase on special event 1 or 2 copy orders. I just cannot swing it on bulk orders – who knows it might be $23.95 this time next year. The quality is great but that is only going to go so far when the price is so high for a little 80 page pamphlet. |
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Due to the price increase I too am ordering fewer copies of my own book. In the end I get fewer books for the same price. What I do in some cases is buy a few copies of my book, then resel them to my interested customers. People are not always interested in the process of buying online – setting up a blurb account, paying, then waiting for delivery (lets not even get into prices for shipping, book tax etc). If I was blurb though I would be concerned about authors selling their own books. Blurb would make more money if the customer bought the book directly from blurb – but the price for the public is just too much, so instead authors buy the book at their own price, and in most cases uses a discount code. It would make a lot more sense if blurb offered incentives right to the public to buy books off of blurb. |
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Due to the price increase I too am ordering fewer copies of my own book. In the end I get fewer books for the same price. What I do in some cases is buy a few copies of my book, then resel them to my interested customers. People are not always interested in the process of buying online – setting up a blurb account, paying, then waiting for delivery (lets not even get into prices for shipping, book tax etc). If I was blurb though I would be concerned about authors selling their own books. Blurb would make more money if the customer bought the book directly from blurb – but the price for the public is just too much, so instead authors buy the book at their own price, and in most cases uses a discount code. It would make a lot more sense if blurb offered incentives right to the public to buy books off of blurb. |
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I have a book advertised at the selling price on several other websites and it had sold well but no one told me and I didn’t receive an email, that the price had increased. I looked a bit of a chump and very unprofessional when someone placed an order and was hit with a higher price than I had advertised. I have now had a couple of problems. Recently placed an order for two books to get the 20% discount in October and three days later received a code for 25% discount. Didn’t I feel a special customer! |
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It’s even worse than what all you guys describe ! Until September, the prices here in France were in dollars. So a small square 21-40 pages book was sold at 13,95 $, which is 10,18 euros. Now, without any notice, the price is 14,95 euros ! I’ve already written three times to blurb about this, but have received no reply. This is almost a 50% increase ! What’s worse, the price of the 2 books I’ve already written has jumped by 3€, which makes them totally unsellable (don’t know is that’s the correct word in English). Does anybody know what sort of game they’re playing ??? Thanks in advance for replying. |
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Problem is that we, the book writer, are in many cases are under the illusion that Blurb offers us a route to market , riches and fame , carefully forgetting that in printing, the economies of scale come from a print run , which in my case I couldn’t afford nor would I wish to take the risk of what, in my writing is a niche book . I’ve looked at other options and the so called competion and basically my book would be double or treble the price with templates and ways to share that are not even a tenth of Blurbs offering . I’d like the books to be cheaper , I’d happily settle for 10% off and a reduction in the discount codes . I do the books for pleasure and if I can sell a few even better .
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What’s a “book tax”?? I googled it and I found no indication of any such thing. Blurb can raise it’s prices if it wants, but to claim to be collecting a tax (a new tax?) that I can find no record of is pretty risky business. Anyone else out there curious? So basically, I am having a harder time selling my book… so I am wary to order many more. Time to rethink I guess. |
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Hi mbattenberg, We do charge a sales tax for any US orders shipped to a state where we have a business presence. Please check this FAQ for more information about this process. Any information found about a "book tax" is really just the sales tax information. If you live outside of the US, there may be VAT fees charged for your order, depending on your area. This link, will have more information about VAT fees. If you have questions about taxes charged for an order you have placed, please contact Customer Support. Thanks, Jay |
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After reading the Staff note, Nov 11, I am still not sure why I am charged a book tax at point of order. I live in Canada, which does not fit the reason for charging me a tax or for the VAT fee, |
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Hi CoburnBooks, Your orders also have a sales tax included to them, but it’s a Canadian tax, as we do have a business presence in Canada. Thanks, Jay |
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Price rise
