My Blurb Book Arrives

It showed up today. I am very pleased with the image quality which was my first concern. Blurb's system did a fine job with the embedded SRGB profiles in the JPEG image files. I chose the premium paper and am very pleased with its look and feel. The dust jacket is also excellent, very high quality and substantial in fit and finish. The one area that could be somewhat better is the binding. It is fine, but not as robust as a top-flight photography book. This is to be expected with one-at-time printing at these prices.

All-in-All, the quality of the book's construction could hold its own in a bookstore. A very impressive feat indeed given the ease and low startup costs involved.

I chose the 10x8 landscape format. It is a little small for my liking. Many of the images would be better at larger sizes. The issue is unit cost and price. The blurb price for the 10x8 book is $40.00; with a small markup, I can sell the book for $49.95 and have the price be reasonable. Blurb's 13X11 landscape book cost is $74.95. The same $10.00 markup makes the per copy price $85.00. The price feels too high.

I have spoken with a couple of other commercial printers and I can produce 25 copies of the book at a 12x9 size for $42.00 each. the only problem is that I have to commit up front......It is amazing the number of options we have today that were unavailable only a few years ago....