Now that Christmas is over and everyone recieved their books, I can finally post some pics. First off, a review of the publishing service I used.
I went with
Blurb.com this time around- they had the best price for what I needed- I was printing 5 copies of this book for Christmas gifts, and that can definitely get pricey, especially since most companies charge by the page after 20, and this book was 68.
Their
price list is very reasonable- you can choose either hardcover or softcover. What I like about them is that you can have a book made that has up to 440 pages for less than $100.
They offer 4 different sizes- 7x7, 8x10, 10x8, and 13x11. I chose the 7x7 for this Christmas album.
To use their service, you have to download their Booksmart program. It's free, and fairly easy to navigate. It took me a while to figure out how to upload my jpegs and not use their templates, but once I did, uploading went very quickly. I had already figured out which pages would be where ahead of time, so I was able to just upload and go. After I pieced the book together, it did take several minutes to upload to their site, and even timed out on me once, so I had to start that process again. I don't think that was their fault however- I think I accidentally messed it up while trying to do something else. So I tried again, went and ate dinner, did the dishes, then came back and it was done.
I already knew ahead of time the deadline I needed to order so that it would arrive by Christmas. I uploaded a day before the deadline- December 9th. The next morning I received an email that it was being processed and would ship on the 17th, just in time for Christmas. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it shipped early, and arrived at my door ON the 17th! Very prompt! It was packaged nicely- each book was individually wrapped in plastic, and then they all came in one box. Shipping was also very reasonable- I paid about $95 total for 5 books plus shipping. Price wise, they're the best. I think shipping was $8.99.
Out of the 5 books I ordered, there was 1 that the printing process messed up on the cover and placed it about a quarter inch too low, so I have a white border on the top. Everything else was ok. I don't know if I'm going to bother notifying them of it- I had to get them sent off, and truthfully, I don't think my husband's 87 year old grandma is going to notice the difference.
The binding is glued together- there's no stitching, stapling, or anything else. Just glue. That was a little disappointing, but for $16.95 per book, I guess I can't complain too much. I did order softcover, so maybe the binding is different on a hardcover.
I'm a little disappointed in the back cover- I did a simple solid background with my picture at the bottom left corner, and included a "Album made with lots of love by Liz". The barcode went right over my name, so it just says Album made with lots of love. Fortunately, my family knows who I am, but next time I'll do that a little higher.
The page quality is pretty good. It came on a semi glossy surface which has a very nice feel to it. I don't remember if there were any options for page choices or not. There are a few pages where if you look VERY closely, you can see some pixellation in the pictures. The camera used was a 6 MP I believe, so I don't think it was the photographer. But, it's very minimal, and like I said, you have to really be looking for it. I resized all my layouts to the exact specifications that Blurb put on their site, and there were a few pages that had very minimal cropping, but I think it helped a lot that i resized to their specs, instead of sending in a 7x7 size.
Overall, I'm very satisfied and will use them again. If you're printing multiple copies of a book, I highly recommend them. I love looking at the pages- it's so neat to see my work in something other than a computer screen.
There are a couple of things that I want you to be aware of when using this service. They have a "slurp" feature so you can import your blog and turn it into a book. It's the coolest thing and goes very quickly, but for some reason, my pictures were apparently too low quality to use in print, so if I want my pictures, I need to upload them myself. I don't know if that's Blurb's fault, or Blogger's, but I'm tending to lean toward Blogger's, based on my experience with them.
Another thing is that Blurb will create a PDF of your book, but it's only the first 15 pages. I thought that was a little strange- I like to be able to preview the entire thing to make sure I did it correctly. Now, I remember there being some PDF option to check at the end, and I don't think I checked it, so maybe that's why I only got 15 pages.
With the softcover album, you can customize the cover, as you can with the hardcover. However, I couldn't find a way to customize the spine with softcover, so it's just a plain white spine.
Anyway, that's my review of Blurb. Like I said, I will use them again, and am really hoping they come out with a 12x12 size. They do have a 13x11 size, which would leave a slight border around my 12x12, but I've heard of people doing that and it looks quite nice. I don't know if I'm going to use them for my 2006 album yet or not. I think I'm leaning towards VioVio at this point, since they can do a 10x10.
Thanks for reading! Now here's the album pages, then down below, the actual book.
I scraplifted this one to get back in the groove again:
These got out of order. This is what my 8 year old daughter created all by herself! :)
I just did this tonight- This will be the cover and first page of my 2006 album. (13 pages left by the way!) SO close to being done!
I did these 2 tonight also. It's a 2 page spread of my son's blessing at church- he was blessed New Year's Eve last year:
I love love love this one:
