sharepromotesellblurb

Blurb offers a number of ways you can share, promote, and sell your books.

Once you print your book you can invite others to preview and purchase it, either with Blurb’s announce feature or with your own mailing list.

Blurb’s new widget allows visitors to preview your book online. You can show as much or as little as you like. You can install it on any webpage by copying the HTML code. The widget has one click social network sharing and purchase functions.

Keyword your book to make it easier to find your book on the Blurb store and on Google. All the text in your previews is Google searchable!

You can sell your book in the Blurb store. Anyone can find your books marked public. Only people you invite can find books you mark private. Blurb’s online service will track how many books are sold. You can even make a profit on your books by marking up the price and Blurb’s website will give you reports on your progress. Checks are sent to you monthly.

Blurb takes and fulfills orders for you. Alternately, you can order any quantity from them and take and fulfill orders yourself, which you’ll need to do if you want to sign or enhance (emboss, slipcase, include a print) your books, but you’ll have to pay for shipping twice (once to you and once to your customer).

Blurb’s combination of easy to use software and order fulfillment creates a combination of capabilities that’s unique among print-on-demand services.

Find my Blurb book Antarctica here.

Find out about my Blurb seminar May 15 in Toronto.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops.

Category: Blurb, Books
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blurquality

In its few year history, Blurb’s quality has improved tremendously.

How does Blurb’s print-on-demand quality compare to standard web offset press quality? Blurb delivers better quality than most offset presses where careful attention is not paid to production. Blurb doesn’t meet the best carefully overseen offset quality.

Common problems with Blurb printing include printing dark with some shadow detail loss, inconsistent neutrality and graybalance, and slight banding. Blurb’s dot structure or line screen is average, which is somewhat coarse in comparison with the finest 300 line screen offset. Blurb offers slightly better saturation compared to offset, but not six color hi-fi offset. The problems you encounter with Blurb are all common problems with offset printing if it’s not carefully overseen, which is common.

Oversight is one of the challenges with print-on-demand paradigms. It’s not practical to proof a book of one. It’s not practical to proof it again six months later with the next order. It’s unrealistic to expect an extremely low volume run to compete with a high volume run. In a high volume run, time and materials are allocated to test press conditions, carefully proof content before final printing, and maintained during a run of hundreds or even thousands. That’s why offset runs are only cost effective if you’re making a lot of books and that drives initial costs much higher and per unit costs much lower. Blurb’s offers extremely low initial costs but higher unit costs.

The Blurb revolution makes some books, that otherwise might never have been made, a reality

So, how good is Blurb’s quality?
Good enough.
And getting better all the time.

Find my Blurb book Antarctica here.

Find out about my Blurb seminars in New York April 29 and Toronto May 15.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops.

Category: Blurb
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blurbnation
Professional design makes a difference.
Want to hire a professional to design you Blurb book but don’t know one?
Find one on the BlurbNation Directory.

You’ll get better results when you work with a designer if you understand core design concepts.

Check out How to Make a Gorgeous Photo Book here.

Check out these great design books I recommend.

Find my Blurb book Antarctica here.

Find out more about my Blurb seminars in New York April 29 and Toronto May 15.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops.

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Phil Borges documents endangered cultures. He is a co-founder of Blue Earth Alliance, which sponsors photographic projects focusing on endangered cultures and threatened environments, and the founder of Bridges to Understanding,

Find out more about Phil Borges here.

Category: Photographers, TED, Video
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earthday2010

What can you do to safeguard our children’s future?
Here are three things.

Install low energy light bulbs and turn them out when you’re not using them.

Sign the Earth Day petition for a comprehensive US climate bill.

Join the Climate Rally in Washington DC on April 25th.

Find more ideas with these links. (see bottom of page)

Category: Environment
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earthhour
Saturday March 27, 2010 millions of people turned their lights off together for 1 hour in an effort to conserve energy. Here are some fabulous before and after images of the event. Click the images and watch the lights fade!

Category: Environment
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Use space to improve your design. There’s the space around blocks of text – margins. And there’s the space between elements of text – tracking and leading. Tracking is the space between letters. Leading is the space between lines. If tracking and leading are too tight, words appear cramped and are harder to distinguish from one another. If tracking and leading are too loose, units of text fall apart into separate units. Use enough space to help text rest gracefully on the page and breathe, but not so much space that it weakens the relationships between separate pieces and they drift apart.

tracking3

leading

Find books on design I recommend here.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops.

Category: Blurb, Books
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Limit the number of fonts you use in a single project. If you combine too many fonts they’re almost certain to draw attention away from the content of the words and pictures. Instead use variations of one font.

All of the variations below are of the font Gil Sans.

fontfamily

Find books on design I recommend here.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops.

Category: Blurb, Books
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Whether you’re designing for a book or a presentation choosing the right type face is important. The font you choose helps shape the tone of what you create. As with any endeavor, it helps to have a trusted resources you can always turn to.

Here are my go to serif and sans serif fonts … and a few I steer clear of.

serif

sanserif

stylized

Serif and san serif and the most common kinds of fonts. Serif fonts have a classic feel. Sans serif fonts set a contemporary tone. Decorative or display fonts have a great deal more flair and are generally best used for signage; it takes the right project and a great designer to use them well in other applications. Design is typically best used as a support for content, not a distraction from it or a substitute for it.

Find books on design I recommend here.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops.

Category: Blurb, Books
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Choose a font that sets an appropriate tone for your content. Your choice of font is like choosing an accent for words to be read in.

Read this quote in these six fonts.

charlemagne

garamond

futura

handwritingdakota

mesquite

Did the font influence the way you hear them in your head and ultimately how you interpret and react to them?

Fonts shape your experience of words. Choose them wisely.

Find books on design I recommend here.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops.

Category: Blurb, Books
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