Good source for photo book with a large number of pages?

Chris_911

Chris_911

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Chris Tarling
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I'm putting together a photo book that's going to have a large number of pages - could be 300+.
It's a celebration of my best (four legged) friend that died suddenly in May, and will be a collection of (some) of my favourite images of him that I captured over his life.
I've used Bob Books in the past but those books get expensive for large page counts.
I am happy to pay for quality as it will be a lasting keepsake.
Looking for recommendations please....
 
Blurb is my first port of call for books but they are pricey unless you time your run and get a 40 or 50% discount.

If you’re confident with designing it yourself then Mixam would be cheaper. Not sure if they have some design tools and templates now, but you’d probably need something like Affinity to do the design in.
 
viewfromthenorth said:
Blurb is my first port of call for books but they are pricey unless you time your run and get a 40 or 50% discount.

If you’re confident with designing it yourself then Mixam would be cheaper. Not sure if they have some design tools and templates now, but you’d probably need something like Affinity to do the design in.
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Thanks - hadn't heard of Mixam and it hadn't come up in my search.
Could be a good option for me.
 
Chris_911 said:
Thanks - hadn't heard of Mixam and it hadn't come up in my search.
Could be a good option for me.
Click to expand...
A few of us on here use Mixam for printing zines so there’s quite a bit of experience around on the forum. Not sure about using them for books though, I think one or two folk might have used them maybe?
 
I've been very happy with Cewe after trying a few other companies.

I see their books go up to 202 pages.
 
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Just to update this - I am having an absolute nightmare with Mixam.
There seems to be serious issues with their software process - at their end.
I have designed my book - spending many hours on it.
But their software is failing to generate the final files needed to actually commit the book to an order.
I have spent a considerable amount of time 'chatting' to their print specialists but getting no real progress, other than an admission of 'we can see a problem' and 'you just need to leave it' to create the files.
Well I've been leaving it for 24 hours now, and there's no progress.
I'm not giving up (I've got too much time and energy invested in the project) but I can't see myself using this company again after this experience.
 
Sorry to hear this Chris....I know how much time it takes to put together a photo book and I would not be at all happy with this turn of events.

I hope you get things sorted.
 
I used Blurb which you access directly from Lightroom. It was probably not the cheapest but I was pleased with the quality of my one-off book. I settled for 108 pages and a hard cover (size 33 by 28 mm). It was almost ten years ago now and I am considering producing a volume 2. One good thing is that the details are still stored by Blurb and I could order more copies. I shall leave the contact information with my will in case one of my relatives require another copy.

Dave
 
Dave Canon said:
I used Blurb which you access directly from Lightroom. It was probably not the cheapest but I was pleased with the quality of my one-off book. I settled for 108 pages and a hard cover (size 33 by 28 mm). It was almost ten years ago now and I am considering producing a volume 2. One good thing is that the details are still stored by Blurb and I could order more copies. I shall leave the contact information with my will in case one of my relatives require another copy.

Dave
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I have printed many books with Blurb in the past. Haven't printed one with them in a long while though as they had a problem with a magenta cast on the last couple of books.
On this occasion I specifically wanted to print a book with a large number of pages.
I lost one of my dogs back in May - he died very suddenly, from fit to death's door in 24 hours.
I miss him terribly and wanted to produce a scrapbook of my favourite images from his life (I have thousands of images of my dogs!)
The book I have designed with Mixam is 280 pages. It's only A4 - their max unless you go for a custom size - but I can live with that.
And it looks as though I have managed to get their system to generate the pdf files now - by doing something rather random on my part!
 
That's a very heavy page count you're aiming for! I'd look for ways of dividing it into 2 or 3 volumes.

Layflat models that use printed leaves glued back to back will tend to make for a stiffer, heavier page and overall a heavy book. Also the way that the page block attaches to the covers may depend on just a single leaf attachment at back & front, stressing these if the pages have a big count. No doubt page-count-related stresses increase with perfect binding too - all of which may relate to why various formats have page-count limits.

I tend to feel that there are too many choices regarding commercial photo books. Papers, binding, aesthetics, durabilty ... then there's the quality control & ensuing customer service ... but I guess that most of the time it works after a fashion.

My only experience has been with Blurb. My page counts were under 200. The images rendered perfectly at normal viewing distance, despite them not being true photo prints - you could only see the dot structure by being obsesssive & using a hand lens. Colour & density were good - I'd soft-proofed all the images using their supplied colour profile & supplied them in cmyk as part of their pdf to book option - though I'm pretty sure that supplying them in srgb would've been just as good?

But with all these options, how durable are the bindings, seriously? I've hardly got enough life left to find out, but my instinct suggests that you can't beat stitching. Which I think is only available commercially at volume, which is a long way beyond one-offs.

Just to throw a few spanners into the fire - sorry if I've digressed at all.
 
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