Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The Verdict Is In For Me

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Today, I received from Shutterfly the book I ordered last Thursday and, while there are some advantages to working with Blurb and overall I like the book I got from them, I prefer the paper stock used by Shutterfly. For now, this leaves me with no solution for publishing a book with a layout as complex as the one I used for my SoFoBoMo book. Furthermore, the better grade of paper comes at a cost. Still, I like the Shutterfly paper that much. When I loaded my pictures for this book, I made a point of turning off VividPics and, at least for this book, that made the big difference. This time around
, I had no devastating color shifts or any other disturbing changes in my prints. That's not to say I didn't make a few goofy mistakes in my frantic rush to throw the thing together, but it was a terrific learning experience and none of the mistakes resulted in a book I could never show anyone. I consider the money well spent.

4 comments:

  1. Jesse: thanks for being the adventure you are.

    I have been waiting to publish my book to see the experience and conclusion you have with your books.

    I do hope you will take the time to write a summary post about pros and cons and any gotchas hidden in the publisher or uploading methods.

    Niels Henriksen

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  2. Niels, I do plan to get back to this in the next couple of days with more notes. The short version is that, with these rush, rush books, I stuck with the templates and kept things as simple as possible. Thanks for the encouragement to return to this topic. Will do.

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  3. Be careful, Anita! You're going to become the book making expert! :-) Thanks for sharing your trials and tribulations!

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  4. Paul, no danger of that. I am just doing the amateur style books: process the photos and then select the layout template from the available selections. It's a far cry from the detailed layout work we all did for our SoFoBoMo books. What I may get is a reputation among the folks I respect for not being smart enough to make the best of the Blurb paper stock.

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Anita