It’s a r/evolution in publishing.
And it’s fueled by on demand book printing services like Blurb.
And content producers like you.
And me.
I’m finally in!
My first Blurb book Antarctica contains 45 images and 2 essays.
The size is 8×10 inches.
It sells for 34.95 for softcover and 49.95 for hardcover.
Get a signed copy of my book at my Annual Exhibit 8/2-3. Find out more here.
Order your copy of my Antarctica book here.
Note, there are two Antarctica books. One for the Blurb contest submission and one newly improved. Order the latest one that includes minor edits and better production values.
Get portable PDF galleries of my Antarctica images here.
Get this month’s desktop calendar image from Antarctica here.
Read about Antarctica here.
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Syl Arena
02.08.2008 at 22:02JP!
Could you comment on Blurb’s color management and delivery? I looked closely about 14 months ago and walked away from Blurb. Must be better now if you’ve put your name on the cover. Is there a Blurb profile now? Any special workflow?
Thanks. Syl
johnpaulcaponigro
04.08.2008 at 09:22I can’t comment at this time. You know what that means.
Blurb has been making steady improvements. And this trend continues.
Blurb beats Mypublisher and Shutterfly.
Blurb’s printing satisfices. It doesn’t maximize. It’s not the finest reproduction offset can provide (a touch over inked, some smooth gradations exhibit printer banding, paper’s a touch thin with a little show through, softcover covers can curl with high humidity) … but it’s actually quite good (surprisingly good color and resolution, with fairly rich gamut – they’re printed on HP Indigo machine’s, which are toner based rather than ink based) and durable. The quality is good enough.
Now combine it with the real r/evolution. Blurb is affordable. It’s practical. Easy to use. Easy to distribute. No inventory. No risk. A lot of books are being made that would never be made otherwise. Blurb offered 90,000 new photographic titles last year. Many major publishers offered fewer than 24.
Blurb makes the form of the book infinitely more democratic. This is the r/evolution.
The r/evolution begs a repositioning of expectations regarding quality of reproduction. (This is said, regarding the finest offset reproduction. If you look at offset as a whole, I’ve seen a lot of offset reproduction that doesn’t approach Blurb’s level.)
Paul Michael Kane
04.08.2008 at 17:11I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see this book! I just ordered it in hardcover with the image wrap. I can’t wait to get my hands on it – not only to enjoy your photographic work and your essays – but to also see the quality in which Blurb outputs their product! Hope to see more of these from you in the near future. I very much enjoy the blog – it’s on my list of daily blogs to visit and give me no end of creative inspiration!
Thanks so much!!
-pmk
Brock
05.08.2008 at 15:25“You know what that means”… Um… that you’re under some sort of non-disclosure? I’m with Syl there just before me. I’ve read the user forums on Blurb and seen so many (repeated and repeated) horror stories about their printing that I just walked away.
Today I find out that you’ve published a book with them; now, this is nothing to sneeze at! If you’ve lent your name to these folks, a tacit seal of approval in having a book printed through them, then that’s good enough for me–compelling enough for me–to take a second look.
HOWEVER… if “whatever it is” that convinced you that Blurb is “better than good” isn’t available to unwashed masses, please at least let us know that. I’ll watch and wait for the good stuff to be announced, but would really feel bad if I rushed into printing only to find out you’ve been using a Beta system of theirs.