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Photography Books Now bookstore section?
General Interest
When I entered my book into the Photo book contest, it said it was directing me to a page in the bookstore where all the entries would be displayed. Well, I can’t find any such page or category. Where is it? Or is it not being created until after the contest deadline is over?
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Anyone Received a Book With ImageWrap Cover Yet?
Book Printing
okay, as I was one who dismissed Image Wrap (see above) I have come back to post with a somewhat revised opinion. In a fit of curiousity I dashed off a small format 7×7 book (my first of that size) and dared to try Image Wrap. Surprise surprise, I really liked it for this particular book! Yes, the cover is extremely matte but it somehow works well in the small format, it does look like a book you’d pick up on the "counter rack" at the bookstore rather than from the shelves, but it suits this small format. I would not likely use it or offer it for a large format coffee table book, at least not one that I considered an "art" book, as I still think the dust cover looks much more professional. But I like it for this. On a related note, this is my first 7×7 and while I’ve read complaints here about the printing for this size (as its a different press than the larger formats), I have no issue with the printing. Image colors are true (except for the background color, which looked like it was going to be red but printed more orange—this I think is my fault as I was too lazy to do a true color read-out and just picked it by swatch) and one black and white image printed nicely too, with no color cast. I may do more of these little books!
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Anyone Received a Book With ImageWrap Cover Yet?
Book Printing
>>I must say I’m puzzled by the number of people who say they are not impressed by ImageWrap. To me it looks several orders of magnitude more professional than the dust jacket. Different tastes I suppose, but having the picture directly on the cover with a very classy matte finish looks a lot better to me than an overly shiny dust jacket that will soon get creased and torn.<< Actually, count me in on those that think the dust jacket is a much more professional look. Think about it—look at any quality hardcover book in the bookstore—it has a dust jacket. What’s under that jacket? A linen cover, with usually just the title,author and publisher embossed or printed. That, to me, reads "quality" book. ImageWrap looks to me like something you’d find on the bargain table. Now, a perfect Blurb book for me would be the dust jacket version, with the title/author printed on the linen spine and cover. ImageWrap doesn’t appeal to me! That said, I was curious to try it but after reading these reviews won’t bother, as what I’ve heard reinforced my first impression.
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splotchy color on dust jacket image
Book Printing
Just got my first 11×13 book. The book printing looks great but the photo on the rear of the dust jacket has large splotches of color in the background that aren’t smoothly gradient. The exact same photo occurs in the inside pages of the book, and it looks perfect there (inside, as well as on the cover, it is a full bleed so I don’t think the resolution is at issue.) I realize that its different paper and a different press for the cover, and oddly the front cover image looks great, but this rear one looks bad.
Maybe its a bad choice to use a photo with gradient colors in the background? Does whatever press being used for the cover have issues with that? Hard to explain unless you can see it. These are areas of out-of-focus foliage in the background, instead of smooth transitions in shades of green (as appears in the interior version, and of course in the original) there are big splotches of different greens.
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How many books have you sold?
General Interest
Linda, that is a fabulous idea…to include business cards and/or perhaps a card with a book announcement in correspondence. I’ve got five Blurb books but so far have only sold about eight copies all together, which is a bit disappointing. And some of the books have been in the store and on my website for a year already. :-( I have a full page on my website with links to the bookstore, and have gotten "oohs" and "aaahs" when I show the books to friends and family, but I just think the price point is too high for most folks to buy "sight unseen" from an unknown person off the web. I am only marking my books up $6-8 dollars!
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UPDATED April 8: BookSmart 1.9.4 release
BookSmart
well I just experienced the "save as" bug when I tried to make a duplicate copy of my just-finished book, and it gave me quite a scare. But I found a different workaround—-not knowing about this jpg issue. When I went into my Booksmart data directory I saw that my original book folder had "disappeared". In fact, after a brief panic, I realized that the folder which had been called "Ecuador birds" had been renamed by Booksmart to "untitled". Also, a second folder had been created with the name of the new book I’d designated, but this folder was incomplete, only a few files had copied. By deleting this incomplete folder and renaming the "untitled" folder back to "Ecuador birds" (and all the associated book files within, ie., "settings" etc, with the proper titles) I was able to restart Booksmart and reopen my book. Whew. (Fortunately the book was backed up on another drive, but still…) Meantime, I was able to duplicate the book manually by manually copying the folder under another name ("Ecuador Birds" to "Ecuador full version") and renaming the associated files manually. Booksmart did open this copy but oddly, re-named the book and files again to "Ecuador Birds 2". ??? anyway now i do have two copies of my book, which is what I wanted, but good to know a patch for this is forthcoming. Other than that I’ve had no problems with 1.9.3 so far.
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I would like a quarterly option for sales payment
General Interest
I would like to have an option to receive my meager sales check quarterly, rather than monthly. For those of us who sell just a few books, taking that $5 hit each check is a large proportion of our proceeds. I’d rather defer payment and combine three months worth of sales; then the $5 check fee wouldn’t be such a big deal. of course it should be optional, you should be able to select monthly or quarterly checks.
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Incorrect cropping and zooming in PDF preview
BookSmart
I am having this problem as well, so obviously it has not yet been fixed. I’ve got four books and only one of them shows this skewed PDF preview. Several of the images are showing improper placement. The book prints fine, but the preview is a real problem for me because I want to have the PDF preview enabled in the bookstore, and if the preview looks bad, it reflects badly on the book. Any hope of getting this issue addressed?
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