Blurb

I have some sympathy with Blurb when I read the reviews here. Some low star reviewers are clearly blaming Blurb for their own incompetencies! Self publishing where you do your own layouts is quite difficult if you are fussy about complex layouts, which I am. I use Blurb for text and illustrated books with a high image to text ratio and it's taken… Read more

me years to get a grip with the quirks of the software, first BookSmart and the BookWright. Their origins as a printer of personal photobooks is still at the base and as I print text heavy books and even novels, care needs to be taken. That said, the service has deteriorated to some extent. I'm in Australia and I have to be VERY careful to select a format, such as Trade Books, which are printed locally. Otherwise the shipping cost from the USA can exceed the printing cost and make a project uneconomic. And I don't discover that until i'm into the ordering process and have to go back and redesign. And there have been occasions where it depended on which week you ordered as the printing would shift unexpectedly from Austraia to the US and the costs jump around from excessive to ridiculous. I'd love to produce. a magazine but I use a 10x8 Trade book instead as thye are not printed locally my shipping cost for magazines would be severe. They really should indicate on their costings web page the print origin and the shipping costs. The overall costs are a bit obscure in the pricing process as the native quoting is in USD unless you select the local currency. So a trade book I think is going to cost m $15 ends up costing $30 by the time they've added in tax and shipping. This has had me looking for alternatives. Shipping cost for locally printed books is fairly high, unless you order up in bulk. But it does mean that buyers in North America and Europe/UK pay a reasonable price. On the up side, many of the self-publishers out there demand that you stump up thousands of dollars for a large print run and a place in their bookshop. They are not true 'print on demand' like Blurb and some get poor reviews online. Perhaps again because the customers are expecting too much? I took the time to learn the process and always order two test copies and adjust as necessary, despite the shipping cost at around 45% of the total. Painful but essential.

Excellent results photo and trade books – I have done one photobook and three large trade books (400+ pages each). Excellent product quality in all areas. The font choice could be expanded to include some more recent fonts, though. My other suggestion would be to expand the 480-page limit, which is often not enough for a trade book. My friends praised their copies of the photobook. Show details

Blurb – This blurb photo book is sooo bad - cannot use it and to add insult to injury I was charged three (3) times the photo book cost &64.99 charged for postage

Why does my book come Seattle not Australia? – I love the quality of the books and have just ordered my 13th one! Love thr hard cover with the wrap around photo However I live in NZ. I chose the Australian Blurb website and thought I was paying Australian dollars. I got my visa statement and for 2 x 35 page books it's $150. So it used US dollars when it showed me the price not aussi. And it's… Read more

being posted from Seattle not Auso is taking 2 weeks. So bizaare. How can I get my order filled in Australia?

Blurb eating away book sales profit – Why can't Blurb maintain the profit margin relative to the sale price? This should be very easy to do from Blurbs end of the process. Why does the book writer have to keep a look out for book sale price rises that eat into their profit margin? Can Blurb inform the writer of the books, what particular book is currently affected, rather than having… Read more

the writer go through their list of books - in my case more than ten? Why can't the writer set a percentage profit margin that is reliable or set a rounded up figure then Blurb work out the retail price? Eg profit $2 on each book sold - No we have to fiddle with the other end of the equation with piddly points of a dollar that if we are lucky might get somewhere near $2  - why the big confusion?  Has the marketing department ever heard of [kiss] KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID?

In short why does the burden fall back on the writer when Blurb is making its profits from other peoples work?  Also why does no one listen to common sense?

Inconsistent printing and poor quality for a high price – Books fall apart. I did a large order of 125 books and had to have some reprinted as they literally fell apart upon opening. I've since had some new orders printed and found similar issues. Also have found different batches the layout changes on the cover even though the same file was used. They seem to outsource to random printers therefore… Read more

providing inconsistent results.

I'm about to print my second book with an Australian company I know and trust. I'm really glad I am as I've discovered Blurb are a lot more expensive this time around and no longer provide large order support to runs under 300 books. Previously it was 100 books to qualify for large order. They've also cut their large order discount from 40% to 20%.

Also, you can't ring anyone for support. This isn't helpful when self-publishing a large order.

They've lost me as a customer.

Horrid! – Very unresponsive blurb support and they take months to respond. My book link even disappeared from their site on numerous occasions and everytime I have to reach out to them to restore my book link. Their webite has too many software bugs and they never seem to care about authors and their sales. They failed me every time.

Bad Service and Support – I used them to buy two books for my clients that I paid full price for. One book never showed up as per my client (who really knows in that case) and the other book showed up cut way outside of the trim lines. I reached out to customer service who very coldly told me best they could do was a coupon and that this was a self fulfillment service so… Read more

it is not their fault, they're on our end. I lost $150 to this company for nothing. I can maybe understand it was just this rep having a bad day but this is unacceptable! I want refund for both of those books if they even want me back as a customer.

Excellent Quality and Great Delivery Times – Having successfully produced a book with Blurb a few years ago, this year I've created two photo books and on both occasions, the books were beautifully produced. The quality of the product reflects the choices I made and the turnaround on each book was unbelievably quick. I ordered one product on a Sunday night and it arrived in the mail the very next Thursday. I would recommend Blurb for photo books.

Expensive – The book I purchased was overpriced. The covers were thicker then the pages. Shipping charges were also expensive; who adds gst onto shipping charges. Clearly heaps of profit is made.

Poor quality control and no response when contacted – I recently created my 12th photobook with Blurb and I am very disappointed to report that the usual high quality no longer exists. The binding is poor with the adhesive visible when opening the first 10 pages. Most disappointing is that Blurb do not respond to my concerns.

Worst quality,even worse service.never again – Awful quality and service,never again. Imagine reflex copy paper with fading ink,it's that bad.I tried twice and both times were horrendous...Along with the fact that the customer service is non existent......

Results vary - Blurb's software unreliable – I've had 3 books printed by Blurb. Well, make that technically 2 as the last one (recent)was made using their Indesign plugin. Normally I wouldn't use this but against my better judgment I used it to create book artwork. All was fine - it pre-flighted fine - I was invited to upload which I did, successfully and then placed my order, paid etc. 11… Read more

days later the books arrived. Blank. $184 for 4 blank books. So I contacted them. Nothing. Contacted them again Nothing.

Terrible quality. Terrible customer service. Will never use again – I ordered 6 copies of some personalised books to give to children in my family as gifts. I paid full price and also paid extra to have expedited shipping to ensure that they were delivered in time. When they arrived, 2 of the books had been bound with the wrong covers, the binding was broken on one copy and the contents had been inconsistently and… Read more

incorrectly trimmed - in some copies, content was cut off and in others it wasn’t. The problem did not lie with the files that I provided to them. I contacted them as soon as I received the books and sent them photos and videos to show them the problems to try to get it fixed as soon as possible. That was a week ago. To date, they have completely ignored me despite a number of follow ups. To add insult to injury, they currently have a 40% sale on exactly the same products, so I feel as though I have been ripped off as well as ignored. I cannot give the gifts that I spent an enormous amount of care and time on because of Blurb’s complete failure to provide what I paid for, and they won’t even contact me to try to fix the problem. Update: Blurb didn’t contact me at all until after I raised a complaint through PayPal - more than 10 days after I first contacted them. In the end, I had to re-order the books with another company. Blurb did refund my money, but nearly a month after I first placed the order with Blurb, I still do not have anything I can give as gifts as I had planned. Do not use Blurb if you want a reliable good quality product or any kind of customer support.

QuarkXpress user - Excellent product – I have made several Blurb photo books and the finished product is excellent. I am a graphic artist so prepare and design each page including type to exact size in QuarkXpress importing retouched 300dpi images. I save each page as an eps then open in photoshop and convert pages to RGB jpgs, as requested, in photoshop as the page No. I then easily… Read more

add each page in order to Bookwright then upload. This works for me. I love Blurb books - the quality never fails.

Brilliant! – I have made many photo books with Blurb over the years and have had nothing but excellent quality and service. The colours and definition of my photos have always been faithfully rendered on top quality papers. If a book was slightly damaged, it was immediately replaced at no extra cost. Highly recommended.

Poor customer service - you'll be ignored - do not use Blurb – Recently ordered a book for a special birthday of a relative. Two minutes after our order was placed we realised that a few errors needed to be fixed. Contacted Blurb them through customers support straight away. Our contact was ignored for two days then our order was shipped without the decency of even contacting us. A waste of $90.

Idk why the other reviews are bad – My friend and i wrote a book together - it was such an easy process, like unbelievably easy. they have free book editing software. The pricing of the book was really really really cheap, even though we got just 2 units - and it took 3 Days to come !!! kinda insane. Could not be more happier *Note for improvement* It would be great if there was a collaboration feature to edit and share the editing process with others.

Very poor quality photobook. So poor I'm doing it again – Don't do it. Just use another service, like Mixbook. Thin stock. Rubbish cover. Poor photo reproduction. Expensive book to print and expensive to ship. I'll never make that mistake again.

Little bit good, little bit bad – Recently ordered a phonebook from Blurb Australia. The process was easy, and the book arrived in less than a week which was amazing. I was disappointed with the print quality however, quite a lot of graininess - even on the professionally shot images, which is OK for the purpose of this particular book, but I wouldn't want to product an important… Read more

photography album or wedding album using this service. I work with printers on a daily basis and the digital printing equipment they must use to product such low quality prints must be very old, or very cheap.

Low print quality at Blurb Australia – Had an unpleasant experience with Blurb Australia. Ordered a photo album from Blurb Australai while there was a 40% discount offer. Quality of the print is very low, I think I could have done a better job with an office printer. While I was disappointed with the print quality of the photo album, I was very happy with the work done by Blurb USA. I… Read more

have used Blurb USA to order a photo album for a gift and I couldnt have been happier with the result. Used most of the same pictures for the photo album ordered at Blurb Australia but the print quality was below average. Customer Service support is un-helpful and do not take into consideration customer satisfaction. I would not recommend Blurb Australia to any of my friends and will definitely not order again from Blurb Australia.

Amazed at the quality – I used the Blurb Book Smart program to make a photobook. Why I chose them: I wanted a program that had a lot of text layout options as well as photo layout options. I am not a professional & I don't have technical knowledge, I have made plenty of photobooks before but this time round, I had my dad's life story I wanted to print up & it ran to… Read more

50 foolscap pages he wrote before he died. I wanted the security of knowing I could pick a layout and it would work without me having to fiddle with it or work out anything. Plus I wanted to add some family history & photos.

If you want a program that allows for a lot of text, I would recommend Blurb.

The program itself:

I downloaded the program and at first found it a bit tricky to get used to but once I worked out my way around it was easy enough. It just works a little differently for eg editing, than some other companies, that's all.

Technical help. Any time I had a question, I had a quick response via email.

One option I loved was the header/footer for adding title & page numbers. Just a head's up though, if you use them add them last thing when the book is finished.

I chose BookSmart as it had different background options, frames & decorations. I wish they had that on all their programs.

My book:

It is 230 pages long & I opted to have the better quality paper, which was about an extra $17, but only available for books up to 240 pages.

Let me tell you, I was worried about my book

What would the paper quality be like, what would the colour be like, would some of my family tree charts print up okay. Was the paper going to be too thick for the book, since it was pushing at almost the maximum.

I was amazed at the quality. The paper is very nice, a slight gloss.

The most impressive thing for me was that the photos came out exactly like they look on my computer screen. In the companies I usually use for photobook (photobook Australia & photobookshop) that is not the case. They often come out a bit darker & you have to make your photos a bit lighter to allow for it. Not with Blurb.

The text came out very clear too.

I was very impressed.

Remember, I got 230 pages and for this, I paid about $60 per book, plus extra for tax & postage-about $80 each in total. (I ordered 2)

Recommendations:

Join their email notification & you'll be sent special deals every other week. My book was almost half regular price. What I did was I worked on the book for ages then when it was finished I just waited for a special offer and uploaded.

What I would like to see:

The size of the book I got is not bad but they only had 2 sizes for me in the Book Smart program, as I wanted a portrait orientation. I wish there had been a middle size available, slightly larger than the one I chose.

Books published exactly as I expected – I have created photobooks using Snapfish, Shutterfly (American) and Blurb. The last 5 books I have created, however, have been with Blurb. Here's why. 1) The books are well put together, with quality binding, nice end papers and a spine which fits the book exactly (unlike the ones from Snapfish). The printing is good quality and matches what I… Read more

see on my (calibrated) monitor.

2) I like being able to work on my PC and then upload the pages when I have finished the whole book. That's because it's easier to move things around and make changes. It also means that you can work offline. Blurb allows this (as do some others).

3) I found the Blurb software easy to use. There are many layouts provided, but it's possible to further customise them if you're not happy. You do have to download it, but it's not much trouble.

4) Blurb (and Shutterfly) allow me to totally customise the front cover, back cover and spine. Snapfish has more limited options.

5) I love the amount of support and technical information provided by Blurb. If I want to know the exact dimensions of a page, including the "bleed" and "trim" then the information is available. Shutterfly also provide it, Snapfish didn't last time I looked (and asked).

6) I like the choice of different papers. I have experimented with the more expensive papers (and like them) but I have to say that the cheapest paper is fine.

7) I said that the Blurb software is easy to use, and it is. But Blurb also provide a module for control freaks like me to create their book using Adobe Indesign (which is what I now use).

I recommend Blurb for those who want to take a bit of time to create a good quality photo book. It's not as cheap as Snapfish-on-special, but for something which lasts, the quality is worth it. I'll still use Snapfish for a quick, softcover memento of a weekend, or for gifts like mugs and calendars. Especially when they have a 40% off sale! But for now. I'm using Blurb for my "keepers." Good quality, good technical information, lots of design freedom if you want it. Tracking info provided. Would be nice to have a more 'rectangular' book size in between the 'standard' and 'large' sizes.