Photobook - Blurb or Bob Books?

[alunl]

Having converted to digital only last year I was keen to try out one of its strengths - self publishing a photobook.

To this end I have produced a couple of books using Blurb (13" x 11"). While the overall quality is decent and the price reasonable the perfectionist in me is wondering if I can't get a better product elsewhere.

Specifically, the niggles I have are:
1) The cover - Despite being hardbacked, the cover seems quite flimsy, the matt finish feels fairly amateur and the print quality does not seem as good as elsewhere in the book. I would really like to get a "professional" feel to the cover as I feel it lets the product down.
2) Printing - for a number of pictures the printing in the book seems to be darker than when it was previewed on screen. Not massively so but enough to annoy me slightly (esp after I post process them from Raw files to try and get the exposure bang on).

I am considering trialling Bob Books but as it is significantly more expensive I wanted to get your opinion on them. Do you have experience of this company and what are your thoughts on them. I would also be interested to know what Blurb users think.

Cheers,
Alun

[kennyli]

Just found your thread having had a similar experience but the other way round. I am a long term Bob Books user and have just ordered my first Blurb book.

I have also observed the same 2 issues you stated. The cover is just not as professional nor robust looking as the Bob Books ones have been in the past. The print is also slightly darker contrast/exposure than what I see on my screen... although I do recall this being the case with Bob Books as well and I had to over time, compensate by turning down my screen when working through the photos. I also wonder whether the print issue is due to the fact that the paper I used (their heaviest and most expensive Proline Pearl Photo) is still slightly too gloss for me, mean you find yourself angling the book slightly in order to get the picture to appear as you expect.

In addition, there were 2 quality control issues. Characters intended for the spine did not aline correctly and instead, spilt over onto the edge of the front cover slightly. Also, there are minor scuff marks/print scratches on some of the pages. I have emailed them about this and await their response. I have not seen any forum posts by anyone else specifically on these quality issues so I am assuming mine is a one off and that Blurb will rectify it. I would be interested to hear your experiences in this regard.

The Bob Book Photographic Hardback, with 300gsm open-flat pages is an excellent product and worth every penny in my view. I am considering going back to Bob Books having had this lacklustre experience with Blurb. The main advantage with Blurb is that Adobe Lightroom 4 has a book module that allows you to produce books from within the package, greatly improving my workflow, before shipping off to Blurb for printing.

[P_Stoddart]

Jessops do custom books for photos.

You can check a sample product out first in shop ie feel etc.