Category: Bookmaking

This is the sixth post on my experiment comparing making a print-on-demand mini book with making a similar book by hand.
After my disappointment with the books I made on Lulu, I opened the box containing my iPhoto-made books nervously. Happily they were an order of magnitude better! You have to buy 3 iPhoto books at a time ($11.97 + shipping). Each book came wrapped in a resealable cellophane sleeve. There’s no Apple or iPhoto logo on the back (although the back cover and inside cover pages are all white — doesn’t seem to be a way to put your artwork on those pages, unfortunately).
The big problem is that the book doesn’t really lie flat — the first half of the book has an approx. 1/4″ gutter, while the back half pretty much lies completely open. Since I didn’t take the gutter into account in my artwork, the immediate visual result is that the text, which should be centered on the page, isn’t quite. So if I’m going to print these again, I’d re-do my images to compensate. It also looks like the entire book should have the gutter, not just the front half. With only 3 books as a sample, I can’t tell whether this is a flaw in the production of only my books or all mini-books.

This is the fifth post on my experiment comparing making a print-on-demand mini book with making a similar book by hand.
The book I made using Lulu arrived the other day (this post relates my experience laying out the book). You can’t just buy one mini-book, you have to buy them in multiples of 4 (or $15.96 + shipping). They arrived in a ridiculously large box looking very forlorn.
And right they should look unhappy, as I was too when I opened the books. If you remember I was confused by the Lulu layout software and what the preview was showing me. After I ordered my books, a Lulu staff member answered the forum queries about this, confirming my assumption: “This is where you can expect the printer to trim the page. For this reason you should not put important text and/or images in this area [outside the rectangle].”
The image to the left is the Lulu preview with a dotted rectangle — anything outside that area might be trimmed. So I kept the parts of my images that mattered inside the rectangle. A photo of the book that arrived is below the preview — they trimmed inside this “safe area.”
And, unfortunately, that’s not all. The spreads are badly folded, so that the left-hand page is not completely pink, but has a white stripe (different width on every page) at the gutter. And the Lulu logo is emblazoned on the back of the book — can’t remove it or put my own logo. Finally, the preview that is available after the book is “published” — authors use this to promote their books, so prospective buyers can see inside the book before buying — shows the trim as about 1/4″ above and below the dotted rectangle. WYSIWYG it isn’t.
The books arrived last Friday (Jul 17) and over the weekend I submitted their complaint form stating the printing had gone awry, including pictures of the bad trim and gutter problems. After 5 days, I haven’t heard a peep back.
My conclusion: lousy production, lousy customer service, bad product. I won’t be making another book with them.

This is the third post on my experiment comparing making a print-on-demand mini book with making a similar book by hand.
In my last installment, I tried making a little book on Lulu but found the experience pretty frustrating. Despite misgivings, I’ve ordered the Lulu book but won’t enter it in their contest until I see the real thing.
In the meantime I’ve also made the same book using iPhoto. From the samples shown on their website (see images to the right), these books meet my requirement of a full bleed and appear to lie flat when open. They are 3.5 x 2.6 inches, 20 pages, $3.99 each (but must be bought in 3-packs for $11.97 + shipping).
Since I had all the images for my book already made, this task was dead simple. In 30 minutes I had put the book together, made a movie to look at the pages (unnecessary but fun none-the-less), and ordered the book. Below is a screen snap of the iPhoto window, with the spreads at the top and the spread I am working on in the larger window. I like the larger spread display, as I really get the feeling I’m looking at a book…
While I’m waiting for the books to arrive, I’ll be working on making the handmade versions. More in a couple days about that…

This is the second post on my experiment comparing making a print-on-demand mini book with making a similar book by hand.
My first task was to reformat the original book and condense it a bit — it was 22 pages and needed to be 20. I’d read some comparisons of print-on-demand services, and Lulu, the service I’m trying, allows you to upload a PDF of the book pages, so you can use your own fonts and page layout software. All of the others require you to use their software and limited set of fonts to layout your book. I particularly wanted a full bleed and a book that opened flat, and the example photos of mini-books on Lulu’s website (picture above) indicated they would do that. So I laid out my book in InDesign and made a PDF….
Once I got to Lulu, though, I quickly discovered that my information was wrong — to make mini books (or any of Lulu’s “photo books”), you have to use their software (a flash program called Lulu Studio). So I went back to my PDF, read it into Photoshop and exported the pages as JPGs to import into Lulu Studio.
Uploading and arranging my JPGs into a book was easy. But the preview had me stumped. In one window, you see a large double-page spread you are working on while along the bottom there’s a scrolling window with small versions of the spreads. Here is the large double spread…

What is that dotted lined rectangle and gray area around my images — does that indicate the trim or something else? I made the JPGs over-sized (1/16″ larger on all sides than the book to ensure the pink bled off the left pages), so why didn’t the images fill the preview? The second smaller preview looked more like what I thought I should see (that’s it to the right).
I popped over to the Lulu forums to see if there was an answer (no). I’ve emailed Lulu support (but several days later I’ve not gotten a reply).
Annoyed, I hunted around to see if other print-on-demand sites made similar small books. I quickly discovered that iPhoto, the Mac program, also lets you make photo books — they have one that is roughly the same size as the Lulu mini book (3-1/2″ x 2-5/8″ and also 20 pages). So for the moment I’ve shelved Lulu and am off to make an iPhoto book….
One more small annoyance about Lulu’s layout program: you can reorder the pages, but the display is so small, it’s useless (see screen snap below). I ended up starting over when the pages were in the wrong order — I couldn’t figure out which pages to swap because I couldn’t read the type…

Several weeks ago, my friend Kate suggested that I try making a mini book (a 3.75″ x 2.5″ photo-book) on Lulu, the print on demand self-publishing site. At the time, I did a cursory look & thought the price ($3.99 for a 20 page book) might be cheaper than what I could make such a book for using the equipment in my studio (and probably much less aggravating). Printing photos or even color illustrations is always the biggest issue for me whenever I make a full-color book — the paper choices for my ink jet aren’t very nice (must be coated paper which doesn’t fold very well and the coating makes the paper too white for my taste, so it’s got to be covered completely with ink) and the ink is expensive. While I’ve made an uneasy peace with my ink jet, it can be very ornery — especially the times it sprays bits of black ink over parts of a page, rendering the output useless. So I’m always interested in new ways to print full color pages for my small editions (25-50 books).
Since Kate’s suggestion, I’ve framed a bit of an experiment. One of my first books was a very short story I wrote and illustrated about my first year of ballet class. The original version was 5″x7″ with thick Davey board covers, and a single pamphlet sewn signature. I used Mohawk Superfine Text, a nice cotton paper that isn’t coated but the results from printing my drawings and minimal text with the ink jet are tolerable. Recently someone in my ballet class reminded me of that book and asked to get a copy. I’ve had it on my never-ending to-do list to make a few and decided to use Lulu to print them (reformatted to the smaller 3.75″x2.5″ size). I’ll also make 2 by hand — one using coated paper and the other using Mohawk Superfine Text. I’ll compare the price to make each book as well as their look and feel.
That’s one of the spreads from the reformatted book, at the top of this post. I’ll report back in a few days about using Lulu.