Book publishing sites
duprasil (16 points) | Wed, 2009-02-04 00:42Any ideas on a good web sites to publish books, annual reports and portfolios with reasonable price. I tried to use blurb.com, but this site has limited book sizes and limited layout templates, plus they don't give you the opportunity to create and import your own templates.
Ija
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most (all?) of them have limited sizes. that makes it easier for them to plan press runs to maximize books that fit on their press sheet. you're unlikely to find any that will allow you to use custom sizes. at that point, you might as well just go to a regular printer.
i've used Lulu.com before to do a couple of books (one paperback novel, color cover and b&w interior, one 9x7 perfect bound book, full color. there are no "templates," per se. they do have template file, but that's mostly so you have bleeds properly set up and you can see what the "safe zone" is on the page margins. once you're done, create a PDF to their specs and upload.
You can create and upload your own page designs in Blurb. Create what you want in Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign and import the page as a jpg or png.
Blurb has some tips on its site:
http://blog.blurb.com/index.php/2007/05/03/how-to-import-your-custom-design-into-booksmart/
honestly, that's ridiculous.
first, creating a bitmap of each page and uploading it separately is exponentially more work than creating a PDF.
second, taking a book, say 50 pages, and creating 50 bitmap files means more potential for errors and a more difficult QC.
third, JPG/PNG or any other bitmap is a much lower quality product than a PDF that contains vectors and actual fonts.
lulu.com handles PDFs with no problem. if blurb isn't technically competent enough to handle PDFs, they're not technically competent enough to get my business. it's just not worth the additional work, potential issues, and quality loss.