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Photo Books
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I have selected a few images and ordered a Photo Book from the photobox.ie. The layout and materials are very nice, the prints look great. My only grief is that some of the photos were stretched instead of being cropped, generally it’s hard to fully control the outcome. Anyway, it was very successful with my friends and colleagues, so much that a few copies of the book and a couple of prints have been ordered. Does anybody have an idea where could I order a batch of less than 10 books at the price of around ?30-40 in Ireland? Photobox is not bad, but I would like to try alternative routes (the post strike in England slowed down the photobox delivery a lot).
The other question would be: If I would try to sell these to a bookstore or tourist information office, etc, I assume I would need to start a private business first, is that right?
You could try self publishing with lulu.com. Costs vary according to the dimensions of the book, paperback/hardback, number of pages
and the number of books ordered (you can order 1 book). Its an option I was considering (again) for a PI yearbook.No idea what the requirements would be in terms of selling to a store etc…
They may need an ISBN number which I think would add to the costs. Then again they mightn’t care.Lulu have just added a Flash based ‘Photo Studio’ program that lets you build up a photo book from scratch. I’m awaiting a copy of a book as we speak. I’ll give my opinion when it arrives.
I’ve used lulu to do a few books now. The first ones were in a Word document and not great. The 2nd set were done by uploading photos and building a book online. The last was using Photo Studio, and we’ll see how they come out..Thanks for the replies. I checked the site yesterday, but I wasn’t patient enough to find out how could I make an a4 hard cover book with only 20-25 pages. Keep me updated anyway, I’ll spend a bit more time with the whole thing if your experience is good.
New book arrived. Print quality is still CYMK book print, but looks really good (again not in photoprint territory, but pleasing nonetheless). I’d have to say it’s the best from them yet. Now to get a profile to improve the colour!
Thanks for the update Sean. I’ll order two books from the PhotoBox and one from the Lulu and I’ll see if I like the latter. If it’s much cheaper and ships faster than the photobox, I can sacrifice some quality (not much). I will buy a new monitor and a calibrator next week, so I don’t want to purchase too many prints before having decent images.
Thanks Thorsten! This Yophoto looks just good, Bobbooks possibly does a better quality (?) but the prices and most importantly the 12-14 days delivery time is too much for me. I think, I’ll have to try a few companies anyway until I find the right quality/price ratio.
Really useful tips guys, keep them coming!I’ve just ordered a book in 3 copies from the Yophoto and one from Photobox (for the peace of mind). I will let you know how they turned out.
Have a look at this site, they provide a free software download and its fun and easy to create a book in your own time. I have not seen the results yet but they do a nice 7″ * 7″ book which would suit square images which I like. They would be the main competitor of Lulu press.
Spectra are doing this as well and I have also looked at http://www.mypublisher.com
I haven’t done one yet but hopefully will do a book sometime soon of my daughter’s first year (yeah I know I am a doting mother – cant help myself lol)
Helen
The quality of the spectra one is rubbish…inconsistant colours and all over the place really. Fotobook.co.uk do ok ones, nothing special, but at least the photo reproduction is nice and accurate.
I never tried myself but you might try newly opened aldi photo services online.They offer variety of photobooks at reasonable rates as to me. As was mentioned above it might be crappy quality but you might order cheapest one for the start and if something goes wrong, simply claim for a full refund
http://www.aldiphotos-print.ie/prices.phpI use mypublisher.com and the quality of print and materials for their books are superb….
OK, here it goes, I got the books from the two places I ordered them. The Photobox delivered first, the book is well done, the photo quality and resolution on the images are excellent, the only thing I don’t like is the fastening of the pages (a bit uneven sometimes). Still, the black modern layout is a winner if you want a contemporary book.
The YoPhoto shipped the items in 7 working days, the packaging, cover and fastening is superior to the photobox books, but the photo resolution looks really low compared to the photobox ones. There is more red and the images are also a bit darker than the photobox photos. They use heavier paper and much better quality materials for the books though. Also, at the yophoto I ordered leather cover, which feels way better than the paper. I think, I should have checked first, what resolution they print in, the quality can be bad because of the automated compression of the uploaded images.
All in all, I like both of the companies and will use both of them depending the need for feel or photo quality. If you design your pages in Photoshop or other softwares and fill the pages fully with the predesigned material, you can’t go wrong, otherwise be careful with the distortion of aspect ratios at some layouts at the Photobox. Yophoto’s software lets you design much more freely, but needs a fast pc.
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