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Re: [OM] Speaking of photo books, was: Whatever it is, it is

Subject: Re: [OM] Speaking of photo books, was: Whatever it is, it is
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:49:19 -0400
Thanks for all that detail.  Obviously, the first order should be only 
one book since it appears there's a fairly high probability of getting 
it wrong on at least the first go.  Price is important since what's 
being contemplated is my father's autobiography.  It's about 100 pages 
of text and perhaps a dozen pages of photos of mostly smallish photos. 
Not being bashful I think he'll want to give one to everybody so, again, 
price is important.

Chuck Norcutt


Moose wrote:
> 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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