owen-b's Posts

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? :(

Pretty much as per thread title! In the small square book there doesn’t seem to be an option to have two photos cover the whole page, split vertically in two. The option to do this but split horizontally is there, but that’s not what I need! Both options are present in the next size book up, however.

Any ideas why?

Does this update also fix layouts WITHIN the book? Here’s 3 pics (hopefully) that show my experience:

http://myglasseye.net/stuff/booksmart/Picture1.png

http://myglasseye.net/stuff/booksmart/Picture2.png

http://myglasseye.net/stuff/booksmart/Picture3.png

They emailed me back and offered me another reprint from the USA this time (as the printers there seem to be better) or I could wait a while until they get their European printers up to scratch. Alternatively they offered me a coupon for the full cost of my order to spend on another format if I wanted.

I wrote back and asked why I couldn’t have my actual money back as two faulty orders in a row certainly merited that, and they did actually issue a refund to me. I don’t really understand why they don’t do refunds anyway, especially if you can prove photographically that your order is below standard.

They do seem to be genuinely upset that their product isn’t reaching muster, although they say it’s only a small percentage of orders overall. However, when two products in a row come to me faulty that doesn’t seem like chance but more like a below-standard printing process. I won’t be ordering any hardback books from Blurb in Europe for many months, because even though Blurb say they’re working hard at eradicating these problems from their suppliers (and thank me for showing them evidence of the problems) they also admit it may take a few weeks to iron them out in practice.

I redesigned my book into three smaller volumes and ordered softback versions of them to test the quality. If they’re okay I’ll finally be able to offer them for sale through the International Set Your Price scheme… Fingers crossed!

I should also add that Blurb wanted me to send them photos of the problem, which I duly did, so either they didn’t believe me or they are genuinely chasing these problems down at their printers.

I got my 10×8 hardback 174-page photobook yesterday and my initial impressions were that it was fab – the picture colours turned out great although for some reason I got the feeling there was the TINIEST bit of softness to them, not as sharp as they seem on my screen. However, I often experience that in prints, probably because I don’t view them in as bright light as my LCD iMac screen displays them.

Aside from that, two big negatives struck me. With the book closed, looking at the three edges of the paper that are on display (ie, top, outside, bottom), they seem a bit dirty – not pure white, not grey, not black, but smudgy and streaky. This doesn’t carry into the balck pages inside, but suggests wet pages being cut or something. It doesn’t give a good impression.

The other thing is that between each double page, where the page is glued, the black page turns white about 1mm before the central glue area, resulting in a prominent 2mm white stripe down the centre of each double spread. Not noticeable on a normal white paged book, but hideous on double spreads or coloured pages.

Finally, looking at it in more detail today, certain pages are falling open more easily, not because I’ve been looking at the more, but because the glue is uneven from top to bottom and in several cases the bottom 5mm or so of a page isn’t glued in at all.

Overall, I’m hesitant to order again, but nobody else I like the look of does 174 pages.

Any news on stitching these books? Or losing the white stripe? Or doing a better glue?

To be honest, while I’m looking forward to a positive resolution to this much-anticipated feature, I think the most important thing that needs to be fixed is the delivery prices using an insurable/trackable option, especially seeing as Blurb themselves warn that you’re on your own with no support whatsoever if anything bad happens to your book using SwissPost.

I wouldn’t even dare to consider offering my book to customers with the current UPS pricing – I’d get laughed out of my own photoblog…

AH forget it, just realised you STILL can’t set this up outside the UK. Also, on my 175 page book it will actually cost more to have it delivered reliably and reasonably quickly than it will to actually have the blooming thing printed.

Unbelievably disappointing. :(

Hi,

Decided it’s not worth the risk and am going for a Photobox book on this occasion instead. Will still be using Blurb but this would have been my first order and I need to test them out first before I order something so important!

Cheers for the replies though.