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Blurb vs. Lulu
Book Printing
A side by side comparison of sorts (the book I did on Lulu had more pages, but most of the content is the same.) Mainly comparing the finished copies of the book side by side. Comparison here: http://photos.timchuma.com/advice/blurb_vs_lulu.htm I did look through the forum guidelines and terms of service and couldn’t find anything that says I am not allowed to post this. Thanks.
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Advice on adding a contents page
Book Design and Imaging
I think the problem could be solved if we had the ability to set tabs – but we dont….... I had the same issue – I worked on 3 pages of contents for hours on end trying everything I could to get them to line up - What I finally ended up doing that worked pretty good – was I put the page number in the first column and then the chapter title – I know it’s not how you see it in most books but it worked for me and it all lined up…......
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What Paper Colour in InDesign
PDF to Book
Thanks jmorey, that’s perfect, and brilliantly explained. Easy when you know how! :O)
Thanks again
Jeremy
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Advice on adding a contents page
Book Design and Imaging
Hi David, the key is in the type of font you use. The majority are proportional fonts where the horizontal space each letter takes up varies, so a W takes more space thean an I. That is what normally throws up problems in trying to line up the page numbers in tables of contents. Products such as Word and InDesign have specifiv features to ensure alighnment, BookSmart does not. If you use a non-proportional font, where every character takes the same horizontal space, the lining up of you page numbers will be easy (like an old-fashioned typewriter). They tend to be more boring fonts though, courier is one example. They are rare these days but If you have the patience to troll through the results do an internet search for "monospace fonts" and you’ll eventually find a few. or you can find some here. http://www.themeworld.com/fonts/monospaced.html .......Tony
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Advice on adding a contents page
Book Design and Imaging
Do it in MS Word, print to a file as a tif (using microsoft document imagewriter as the printer) and convert to jpg. Make sure you use a custom size page to match the blurb page. If the size mismatch is too much, you may get aliasing. Mike
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Have you seen it Yet? RGB Color Guide NOW in Print.... Ooooooh...
BlurbNation Member Forum
Heather – I’m sorry to be harsh – but you’ve been hawking this book to BlurbNation members for quite awhile now and I think it’ s inappropriate to be using this forum (and the former Google Group we had) for this purpose. Christine
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Blurb, what about the gap!
Ordering and Shipping
I hope Blurb will come up with something to fill the gap between the $19.95 (standard landscape) and $54.95 (large landscape) offerings.
That’s a big gap!
The new larger square format is very nice, however it does nothing to address that hole in the product lineup.
An offering is needed that is bigger than the smallish standard landscape size and the ‘coffee table book’ sized large landscape!
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Advice on adding a contents page
Book Design and Imaging
Frankly, I would do this with a graphics or drawing program.
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Book Comments/Review
Web Features
I often see previews that inspire me and I’d love to tell the author that, so I think feedback should be open to all. Would *love* to see this feature added! Surely getting work seen and receiving feedback is part of the joy of Blurb?
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Paragraph indentation
Tips and Tricks
I’m designing a b/w text book, (importing from .doc file) and the standard paragraph indentation is way too large. Is there a way of decreasing this? Thanks.
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Advice on adding a contents page
Book Design and Imaging
I’ve been using Blurb quite a lot over the years to produce holiday photo albums and have been very happy with the results. However for the first time in my Blurb career I’m trying to use Blurb to create a "proper" text book. So far everything is going well, however as the completion of the book approaches I’m starting to think about how to layout the contents page. Originally I was hoping to achieve something similar to how MS Word creates content pages, ie.: Chapter 1 …............................................................................ 10
Chaper 2 …............................................................................. 50
sub-section A …................................................................. 55
sub-section B …................................................................. 60
Chapter 3 …............................................................................ 100 Unfortunately this isn’t something I have been able to achieve in the Blurb software, the page numbers aren’t in nice vertical alignment. Doing without the ….................... isn’t practical as it would make it difficult for the reader to identify the correct page number for a particular section. I can’t believe I’m the only person to have had this issue, so I’m hoping people on this forum could share with me their solutions to this problem. Many thanks,
David
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Blurb dropped 6 pages!
Ordering and Shipping
Yep, that’s exactly it. My bad. CS responded with that info.
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Blurb dropped 6 pages!
Ordering and Shipping
The book review is only the first 15 pages – so assuming your book is 21 pages, it won’t show the last 6. :)
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Blurb dropped 6 pages!
Ordering and Shipping
I just ordered my first book. Everything seemed OK. But when i checked the book review after I ordered, my last 6 pages are missing. I’ve contacted customer support to cancel my order so that i can reupload and make sure everything is there. I will report back what happens. Not being able to call worries me.
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Template Sizes?
PDF to Book
Hello blurb community. I recently downloaded the Standard Landscape templates to use and noticed the page sizes are not quite 10×8. It appears to be 9.5×8.0 inches. Also, when I look at the PDF to book size specs it states the final exported size should be 9.625×8.25. Is the final book not actually 10×8? Can anyone resolve this or just explain to me why the size is off? I’m a bit concerned my book won’t actually be 10×8. Thank you very much! - Rachael
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B/W Text Cover Colour Profile
PDF to Book
Does anyone know – am I right in assuming that the cover’s for the B/W Text books are printed on the same HP as the colour books? Thanks in advance, James
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Test print
Tips and Tricks
Lori is right about the 15 day window. But if you leave it as Private (the default), rather than marking it as Public, it will be not be displayed in the bookstore and unless you send (say) a friend a link to the book no-one else will be able to see it, not even the cover. You can safely delete the copy on the Blurb website without it affecting the copy you have on your PC. The "master" copy on your PC will stay there until you explicitly delete it, it is not linked in anyway to the copy you have uploaded to the Blurb server. If you want to take a backup copy of your book (perhaps to write to a an external drive or DVD for long term safekeeping), that is done via the File….Create Book Archive/Backup command, But as Lori says the only way you could read that archive copy in the future is using BookSmart via the File…..Import Book command.The archive and import copmands only work on the copy of your book on your PC, they have effect on any copy of the book you have uploaded for publsihing. ......Tony
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Verify email address
BookSmart
Thanks Tony- yes, we made sure it wasn’t ending up in the Spam or Trash folders- I even sent the announcement to myself- I didn’t get it either. I have been in contact with the support staff several times on this issue though, so hopefully they will be able to figure out what is going wrong.
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Test print
Tips and Tricks
If you or someone else does not order a copy of your book within 15 days the book will be removed from Blurb. I’m fairly new to Blurb but I believe the book once uploaded will appear in Newly Published part of Bookstore. If you mark it Private & don’t check the Preview button, viewers will only see the cover, none of the pgs. I think if you delete the bk from Blurb, it’s gone unless you first save a copy in Archive. Problem w/Archrive book is that apparently you cannot open the file anywhere but in Blurb when you import it back to the site.
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Test print
Tips and Tricks
Hello, I’m working on a book with Blurb. I was curious if it is possible to have a book print. I just tried and stopped when the material was uploaded. What will happen after uploading? I can order the book myself, but can others also order the book already? Is the book visible for others? Can I delete the book from blurb without deleting the book on my PC?
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Large Landscape and other book boxes
BlurbNation Member Forum
Joe – Thanks for mentioning these. I talked with Peter several times while he was developing prototypes and will just second your comment about Peter’s boxes being worth a good look. Good guy who gets what Blurbarians need in terms of boxes. (And I am not on any commission either!) Cheers, Gareth
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What Paper Colour in InDesign
PDF to Book
i don’t know if I understand your question entirely, but I will try to help. I am a graphic designer and i spend 8+ hours in inDesign everyday…
The “paper” swatch you are seeing in indesign should not be changed. It should be left as white. Because your paper is white in the book. They are not actually printing on black paper. What this means is if you want something to be white in your book, you can set it to “paper” this makes it so no ink is printed in this area, and therefor is the color of the paper.
Now for example, to put it a bit simpler, If for some reason, blurb offered a cream colored paper, and you had something set in your document to “paper” when you book printed, even thought eh swatch looks white as default, it would be cream in your book, because that is the color of the paper. Make sense?
Now, to get a color background on your pages. What you want to do is draw a rectangle on your page. The tool is in the toolbar on the Left. You then want to make that rectangle the entire size of the page, plus bleeds. Then make this rectangle the color you want your page to be. Send this Rectangle to the back of the page (or do it on a separate layer on the bottom). I would give you key commands or menu options to do it all but I am on a mac and don’t know if you are. You can make them any color you want and different for every page if you want.
You can make your color with the color mixer palette. To make that color a swatch, just click and drag it’s little color box in the mixer and drag it into the swatch area, that way you can use it later over and over.
you will also notice when you are choose colors it looks like 2 boxes overlapping themselves (hard to describe). One if for the fill color, the inside of a rectangle for example, and the other one is for the stroke, or the outline.
Hope this helps.
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Creating a background
BookSmart
You can do this by using a full bleed page for the background image. Then you can edit that page and add an Image container on top of the full bleed container. You can then save this page as a Template page. You can make different layout this ways. You can also add text containers this way. Note: I have had problems adding containers on top of full page containers – I can add the container, but then it is hard or impossible to grab the container on top to move it or change the size. I haven’t reported this yet as a problem. I am running the latest version of Booksmart.
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Header
Book Design and Imaging
It’s best to do these header (and footer, also) changes to your book when you have finished the book and are doing final edits. If you change layouts or move pages around the header may reappear in a different layout if you do it earlier. I always check my headers and footers—to see if they are where I want them and not there if I don’t want them—as one of my last steps right before I upload the book to Blurb.
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Creating a background
BookSmart
I am beginning another book and would like to use one of my primary images as the background on almost all the pages. It is a broad view of the Bonneville Salt Flats and I would like to place the individual images on top of the background shot. Is this possible in 2.0? I don’t want to have to build each page in PS unless I have to. Thanks scooter
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