On 7/5/2010 9:01 AM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
> Thanks. Much, much better prices at blurb.com. I hope the quality is good.
In my decades in the supermarket business, we had simple names for various
marketing/pricing strategies. Blurb appears
to use "everyday low price", while MyPublisher uses "Hi-Lo". I'm always getting
email special offers from MP. The
current one, through Friday, is two for the price of one.
Between an introductory special for their printed cover books and a 2 for 1, I
have three copies of a "Classic Hardcover
with Photo Finish" of 100 pages, list price $113.95, say $124 with shipping,
for a total average cost of $47.65 apiece,
including shipping. Actually, I also have three slightly wrong versions for
free, as well, story below.
As Steve said, I think the quality is excellent. The paper is thick and feels
wonderful. The actual image size of a
full page is 1200x1600 pixels for a page just under 8.5" high, so only a tad
over 140 ppi. And indeed, if you look for
it, the pattern of ink dots is easy enough to see in low detail parts of the
image. It has a random look, no pattern I
can see - maybe that's the trick.
Whatever the cause, nobody, including me, notices, except when I thought to
explicitly look. The image quality makes me
think of Ken's many posts about hard to define lens qualities. They just look
terrific in sharpness, saturation,
apparent dynamic range, etc. So much so that one seems to just see the image,
not the medium. The medium only plays when
turning the pages, which just feels good.
I was concerned when I had just sent off the book for printing, only to realize
that batch downsizing with FastStone had
stripped out the color space info, and they were aRGB. but the colors seem will
nigh perfect to me and no one else has
had anything but praise. If you have browsed through my larger, online gallery
of Three Days in Brooklyn, you know that
there are many, many people images with pretty much the whole range of human
skin tones, and they all look natural in
the book. <http://galleries.moosemystic.net/Brooklyn/>
If I print another book with them, as is not unlikely, I'll probably do just
the same thing, rather than converting to
sRGB and including the profile. If it ain't broke ... Hmmm, maybe a pocket
photo book with a few images, two for $10, on
this special offer. Sort of a sampler.
There are some limitations.
They only do conventional binding, so the inside part if images is slightly cut
off and visually presents less well than
the outside, so page placement can be significant. I used the opportunity to
recreate my book, detailed below, to switch
left and right images of one page pair for that reason. Adorama has a binding
design available that presents the whole
page laying
flat.
They are limited to 100 pages in a book.
Their software is a bit quirky, with a bit of interface learning curve. Nothing
terrible, but not ideal. It also has a
model for image placement on the page that I don't like. You can pick a page
design format for each page. Each has fixed
image 'holes' to drop images into. I couldn't find a way to get the correct
image size for portrait format images that
would display exactly as the full image. I encountered odd cropping and
resizing. If there was a defined pixel size for
each and a way to stop any resizing/cropping, it would be fine, but I couldn't
find one.
Fortunately, I found that FastStone will downsize to a fixed pixel size while
retaining the original proportions and
filling empty space in the result with a color of your choosing. One simple
batch run and I had all images as I wanted
them in MP's native full page pixel size.
They have various page layouts with provision for text, but I've not tried
them. One could certainly create the layouts
in an image editor, if the defaults ones don't meet you needs. Looking at the
samples from customers that they have, it
looks like the tools are there for very sophisticated layouts and looks. My one
warning is to carefully go through the
whole thing, page by page in preview mode before submitting.
You may download their software for free and try laying out a book without any
commitment.
I'm curious about Blurb, Lulu, Adorama and whatever else may be out there, but
have to say I'm very pleased with my MP
book. It would certainly cost me much more than the list price to duplicate the
printed images to equal appearance
standards on the R1800.
-------------------------------------------------------------
As to dealing with MP, adapted from an earlier email off list:
I've had some amusing adventures with MyPublisher.com. Amusing because I've not
been in a hurry. Their system is highly
automated, to the extent that the customer service people have no control. When
I first ordered the book, the last page
was printed wrong, a full page horizontal image cropped vertically - and
surrounded with white space, where I had used
black in the whole book.
I'm not sure just why that happened. I suspect maybe I uploaded the book
without a final save, so the disk version went
off, instead of the one in memory. This original book was on a special offer to
try their new direct printed cover. It
was a flat rate of $29, including shipping, for a book of any number of pages
up to their 100 page production maximum.
Now I know to go through the whole thing in Preview and make double sure it's
saved. In any case, as throughout this
saga, the customer service by email was quick, friendly and mostly helpful.
When a particular person didn't "get" it, a
clarification on my part always elicited a quick correction. Now the trouble
starts. They can't, or don't, reprint a
book with corrections, or purge a book from their system. So I was sent a
coupon code for a new book order, $113.95 and
free shipping. Generous in that I could choose any shipping up to FedEx
Overnight.
So I very carefully checked the project, reversed two images on opposite pages
to highlight the important part of one
away from the spine, sharpened a couple, took a shadow out of one and fixed the
fonts on cover and spine that didn't
print well and uploaded it. A few days later, I had a correct copy.
A couple of weeks later, I get an email offering 50% off reprints of "my latest
order", which is the correct book. As
usual, the book doesn't have a unique number, just an order number, and the
number of the prior order being reprinted
isn't shown. The link in the email simply takes me directly to an order
process. But it does say "latest order" in two
places. So for $113.95, I order two additional copies. Not sure yet what I'll
do with one, but one goes to Carol's
Brooklyn sister and family, with whom we did these walks.
I should have guessed, but sometimes I'm naive. I received two of the original
flawed book. Also, their cute, custom
mailing box and FedEx failed, and one corner of them was bashed in. One isn't
too bad, but the other is unusable for
sale or gift. So I get back on the email horse, promptly get a coupon for full
price replacement, $227.90, carefully
make the order of the right book, get the order confirmation email, and sit
back.
When I haven't heard anything a week later, back to email. Oops, somehow the
automated order system "didn't push the
project through to production"; try again. But when I try to order again, the
system has managed to remember that I've
already used the coupon. No problem, I get a new coupon, carefully order from
the correct book previous order, pick
overnight shipping, on the theory handling may be better, get confirmation
email, check My Bookshelf online and see the
correct book in the order.
So now I have six copies of the book, three correct and three with flaws. :-)
So, while the automated system isn't
perfect, the customer service and instant willingness to replace a flawed order
is just excellent. If I'd been In a
hurry, I'd have been disappointed. as it is, I have free extras with only small
flaws to loan out.
Published Moose
--
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