Okay, silly pun... but you guys know me well enough to ignore this streak in my character I hope. :-)
A while back I asked what you perceived as a reasonable price for a Print on Demand (PoD) photo book of a certain size (30cm square, 58 pages). Your answers were all over the scale, really; ranging from GBP 20 to NOK 900, which should be something like USD 30 and USD 150 respectively. Today I took delivery of a PoD book from CeWe. The Norwegian operation is through www.japanphoto.no; the EU website is here: http://www.cewe-photobook.com/ The cost was in the high end of your suggested range; NOK 700 (USD 120), and the result has really got me thinking. The paper quality and book-binding craftsmanship looks very decent, no complaints there. The pictures however didn't come out as I expected them. It's not all bad, however, some look better some look a lot worse. I will have to study the book together with my images when I get home from work tonight to see exactly what's happened. I suspect I've dived into most available pitfalls concerning image preparations for books, and expect to learn a lot. What I really wonder about, though, is how to discern my own mistakes from eventual poor quality from the lab. And that's what I need to know if I am to look for another PoD. Blurb is certainly an alternative, but due to some exceptionally silly VAT rules up here in the Frostpit, I will have to pay a 25% surcharge on my own book if I order more than one at a time from abroad. That, unfortunately, brings the total cost from Blurb on par with CeWe. But enough bitching. There's something really, really special about holding a printed book with ones own pictures inside. Flip through the pages, smell the pigments, the glue, the very pulp... It's elating enough to compensate for all of the above. Jostein -- http://www.alunfoto.no/galleri/ http://alunfoto.blogspot.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
