Lulu and books of photography.

[Stephanie Brim]

When buying in the USA, how is the quality of the Lulu books?

I'm wanting to do a small book of photography I've done over the past 3 years or so as both a self promotional piece for possible employers and a way for people to buy my work that I've lost the actual negatives to. I'm wanting to create the layout of the book myself so the actual photo book is out of the question, but how is the quality of the normal full-color books?

 

[Ducky]

I have not used Lulu but heard some good stuff and no negative stuff.
The same applies to Blurb. You might want to check their site. Download their free software and you are in complete control of layout.
http://www.blurb.com/create/book
I do not think Lulu has a similar software.
George

 

[IGMeanwell]

Never used Lulu

but Shutterfly is good

I have only had one problem with them and I'll let you know how that turns out when I hear as to whether or not they reprint the books I sent back

Long story short: I believe they had a imaging unit problem, stray toner on various pages... had to send back... first time in 6 books that I have had that problem

unfortunately they won't cover shipping 🙁

 

[Stephanie Brim]

I'm on a Mac running Jaguar still, so I can't run the software. I'll look into the service, though.

 

[Joe Mondello]

Read this thread about the re-order of the RFF book (2nd) for their opinions on how Lulu has deteriorated.

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42117

I have no experience whatsoever with Lulu, but have read bad reports here on the RFF.

I have heard good things about Asuka Books -- but have no experiemce with them either.

Here's another self-publishing thread to peruse . . .

http://www.nikoncafe.com/vforums/showthread.php?t=87351

 

[rich815]

Forget Lulu if you want decent B&W. It's awful.

 

[Stephanie Brim]

I was going to do a full color inside with a few B&W images.

Suggestions for other sites besides Lulu would be appreciated. I'm starting on the design of the pages tonight.

 

[IGMeanwell]

Wow I have never seen blurb before

http://www.blurb.com/create/book/pricing

Judging by that Nikon Cafe thread the quality looks just as good as Shutter fly .. but a bit less expensive

Darn, maybe I should have just sent back the album, received my money back and then republished it in blurb

Oh well

 

[Stephanie Brim]

One question I have. Do you have to use the BookSmart software? If you don't I can do Blurb as it looks much better than Lulu. If you do...well...I have to figure something else out.

 

[sircarl]

Here's another report from a photographer who published a book using Blurb:

http://pindelski.org/Photography/2007/06/13/publishing-with-blurb-part-ii/

 

[IGMeanwell]

One question I have. Do you have to use the BookSmart software? If you don't I can do Blurb as it looks much better than Lulu. If you do...well...I have to figure something else out.

Judging by that Nikon Cafe thread both Mac and Windows users didn't have too much trouble with the software

but a couple were using Coral Snapfire for their layout

Steph you should also look at shutterfly as the whole layout is online (through the website), it has a good selection of templates, backgrounds, and cover options. Which is now why I see they cost a little more money (plus my books were the 12 x 12 wedding albums), very customizable

And when it comes down to color accuracy, edge to edge printing, and consistency... shutterfly has been in my experience the best

Which is why I was amazed by my recent albums which I ordered 2 and both had toner blemishes (stray marks, usually marked when a something was recently changed in their printer)

I can't post photos right at the moment, but in the morning I can post an example of the mother's day gift I made ( a 12 x 12 book), I couldn't have been more happy with the way that turned out

 

[MartinP]

I recall that there has recently been a thread open at the top of the page concerning a new printer for the RFF book. It might not be suitable as there was a minimum order of 100 I think ? Depending on the size of order, binding, paper etc you could also ask about four-colour lith printing - reasonable quality, but perhaps more expensive with a larger minimum order unless you accept the higher setup costs.

(Sorry I can't search for the exact link - time to go to work. Good luck)

 

[Spider67]

Hi,

Are all those services with minimum orders?
(I recall that lulu was meant as print on demand "publishing house")

 

[IGMeanwell]

Hi,

Are all those services with minimum orders?
(I recall that lulu was meant as print on demand "publishing house")

for blurb, mpix, mypublisher, iphoto, shutterfly ... no minimum orders (or at least an order of 1 is ok)

I know places like Asuka books prefer you to be a reoccurring customer, in other words a working professional photographer, and have different rates if you are doing one-offs

 

[froyd]

Freeform books?

Freeform books?

Am I the only one finding the built-in templates of most of these sites too constricting, and often very mediocre in terms of creativity?

In one of the threads recommended in a post above, I read a suggestion about creating layouts in PPT and then saving them as Jpegs in order to avoid the constraints of the cookie cutter templates offered by all the major self-publishing sites. However, I'm concerned about image quality loss due to the Jpeg compression and I guess saving as TIFF might be an alternative. Still, it would be great if anybody could share some other tips on creating books with free-form layouts.

 

[dcsang]

LULU bites the proverbial ying-yang 😉

I would suggest trying Blurb.

Dave

 

[rich815]

LULU bites the proverbial ying-yang 😉

I would suggest trying Blurb.

Dave

I think you mean just the "yang".

😉

 

[Stephanie Brim]

My main problem is that I'm still on Jag. I can't really afford to buy the next operating system so I'm kinda in a pickle. You HAVE to have 10.4 for the software to work, apparently, and they don't offer earlier versions.

 

[Kin Lau]

I have the RFF2 book from Lulu with the dreaded purple cast, but I also have several self-published photo books from Lulu which have been fine. All the pictures were color and not B&W tho.

Shipping OTOH to Canada via UPS is starting to get expensive.

 

[nksyoon]

I've used http://www.printmyphotobook.com/ - their layouts allow full customization of text and image size/format. They also allow a single image over a double page without you having to make 2 half images.

My copy was printed in Germany - quality was pretty good, in fact my warm-toned B&W images turned out better than my colour images!

I don't know what the quality of books printed in other countries will be like.