Yesterday I was very excited to try out Blurb’s book layout software, BookSmart. It looked like exactly what I wanted to create a beautiful, high-quality photo book from my wedding pictures. Almost as soon as I found it, I signed up for Blurb and was emailed a download link. I had a lot of trouble downloading it from their site, but I chalked that up to weird bandwidth problems and was eventually able to get it downloaded and installed on my Mac last night. Strike one against the software already–it shouldn’t take hours to try and download a 30 MB file. Still, I was excited to get started and I fired it up, anticipating a night of creation–instead I got a night of frustration.
BookSmart is a GREAT concept. Blurb is definitely on the right track with what they’re offering. However, the execution leaves something to be desired. BookSmart is laggy and frustrating. It’s a Java-based application and it took almost a full minute to open. That’s two strikes against it before I’ve even been able to use it! When I finally got into the program, I was expecting something like creating a book in iPhoto, only more customizable and with a lot more bells and whistles. What I got was something about ten times as frustrating as iPhoto, which made the customization not feel worth it.
Not everything about BookSmart is bad. It has good integration with your existing iPhoto library–as long as the files are the right format. I had to export my wedding photos to JPG (they were in TIF) so that I could use them with BookSmart. This rendered my meticulously organized iPhoto albums pretty useless to me. BookSmart can also integrate with Flickr and other online photo galleries, as well as pull content from blogs.
My patience with the program came to an end before I got past creating the front cover. I couldn’t imagine creating twenty more front and back pages of photo and text content at the slow pace I was being forced to move at. When I would drag an image to a location on the page layout, it would take upwards of 20 seconds to load and display. I realize that I am using an older Mac, but I have the RAM maxed out and rarely experience problems even with the latest and greatest software. Perhaps a native application could work a little better, perform a little smoother, and create a better user experience. Strike three, BookSmart. I’m out.
In comparison, the iPhoto user experience is great–it’s easy and FUN to create books, cards, and more from your iPhoto library. It’s incredibly intuitive and natural. My beef is with the cost of the iPhoto books, which is significantly more expensive than a service like Blurb, and with the lack of true customization for people who want more than a canned theme might offer. I’m going to continue to try to find a happy medium between ease of use and customization, but I’m pretty bummed about Blurb.
so in another word, don’t use blurb ?
Booksmart software has been great. It downloaded immediatley, and has been simple and fun to set up and create. I have since done 2 books and sent out some as presents which have been received with praise. I highly recommend this program.
This software flat out stinks. I’ve been working on a 40 page book on this and everything you pointed out is what I’m going through. It freezes literally every 3 seconds so something as simple as moving the type cursor will be a chore. If you’re just going to plop in photos, this software is fine. If you intend to have text as well, be prepared for MAJOR frustration.
Ditto. The download of Booksmart was fast, and that was the last fast I saw. I’m looking at a soft-cover book of 150 pages, and the Booksmart application is just not going to cut it.
Something has changed. I built and printed a book using earlier versions of the Mac OSX and Booksmart, and it was palpably fast.
Now, with new versions of both, the Booksmart app is disgustingly slow. I’m on the verge of deleting the app and trying for a book-publishing service elsewhere.
Really — it’s like using PageMaker in 1992 on a Commodore.
Blurb is fantastic on a PC. I bought a mac book Pro to use Final Cut Pro. Its only ok with 2gigs ram. The Blurb download was slow, but the the screen on the mac is not suitable for colour balance anyway so I’m staying with my pc. The common denominator of all the complaints is Mac not Blurb. Keychain password popups are a major nuisance, I’v tried everything to get rid of them with no success. I thought spending a load of cash on a mac would smooth my digital world but now I think my Dell pc rules.
@tunedin It’s great that the PC version runs well for you. However, I feel that if a company is going to put out multi-platform software, it should perform the same on every platform. I hate Java-based software as a rule…I’d much rather have things programmed natively for a platform because you are much less likely to run into issues like I did with Blurb.
The common denominator of my complaints are NOT due to my Mac. I have no trouble running ANY other software on my Mac. That includes Final Cut Express, the Adobe Suite, etc. Blurb was a major disappointment, not just from a performance level but from an ease of use level. I’m very intuitive with computer programs–have been all my life–and Blurb is just not very user-friendly in its current incarnation.
Thanks for comments Jessica. The print quality, hard cover and binding on my only Blurb book so far is superb. If you know of a publisher package with the variety of sizes and styles that Blurb offers, and runs well on a Mac please let me know. Unlike my desktop PC I can take my Mac to anywhere in the house and work away on-line. Unfortunately I cannot say I’ve been intuitive with computers all my life, valve radios maybe.
I’ve done many books with Blurb and I agree with another poster…something has changed. I’m trying to do a book now with the latest version of Booksmart 2.5.1 and it has slowed to a crawl. Loading an image to a page takes like 10 seconds. This wasn’t the case in the past. Maybe it has something to do with Snow Leopard? I run an Imac 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB of ram. That should be more than enough system for BookSmart. I’ve used other online book makers and Blurb’s products have been best but if my experience continues I’m going to have to start looking for another vendor. And I won’t be buying a PC.
Indeed. I am creating a 250 page BLOG to BLURB Book. The blog coversion was rubbish for a start but what can you do. The software is painfully slow but I am committed now. I have transferred and formatted January to May and need to get it finished. I am not starting again. I am using Snow Leopard on a 2.93Ghz dual core iMac with 4Gb RAM which is plenty. The software is disgustingly slow.
I’m 92 and definitely not intuitive about computers, BUT I’ve got a 250-page text and 50 pictures in a memoir of my brother who was a painter and killed in action when the artist of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-38. I’m trying to use blurb – just want to be able to drop the pictures into the text at the appropriate places. Can’t figure it out. Is there another program that would be better? I use an iMac with a 27-inch screen. I love it.
Booksmart has quite a few glitches, not the least of these is slow speed on anything but the latest and greatest computer. But when you do get your book ready to publish, it’s not worth it.
Blurb has no quality control. The second time I ordered from them, my three books were bound together wrong. They had attached the wrong half of each book, so that they were mixed up — all three books. I explained the problem, but Blurb would not believe me and demanded that I send a scan of the problem.
I explained that I did not have access to a scanner and gave a detailed description of the error they made. They replied that they would not accept my word for it and that I would have to prove there was an error by either giving them a scan or by returning the books.
Since I didn’t trust Blurb with my only proof of their error, I decided it wasn’t wise to return the books. So I borrowed a scanner and spent nearly two hours scanning in three 30-page books which had been put together wrong.
I did not want Blurb to say my scans weren’t good enough, so I made high-quality ones. After a long and difficult upload, I e-mailed the 300 dpi PDF files to Blurb proving that I am not lying about their error. But despite all my efforts, I have no confidence that Blurb will admit their error and send replacements. They have no respect for their customers’ word, their customers’ money, their customers’ time, or their customers’ satisfaction.
By the way, the binding is already falling apart. So much for the quality of their work in that respect as well. Besides all this, Blurb never admitted any possibility of their having made an error. Their e-mails said they were sorry that I HAD A PROBLEM with the quality. They placed the blame entirely on my not liking the results and would take no responsibility for having bound the books completely wrong.
Until this happened, I had planned to complete several more projects with Blurb. I had also told several of my friends about Burb and was helping one of them complete a wedding book for her son. Now, however, I am sorry I ever did business with Blurb. I hope my friends, once they have heard what Blurb put me through, will decide not to do business with that company, either.
BAH I am using this software on a PC nice fast laptop infact.
and I get the same ballsup stuff happening all the time. flippit.
dont make software that is crap, just make software that works.shet
I have been using Blurb on a brand-new laptop and it is like writing calligraphy with a wet noodle. The cursor randomly skips around as you’re typing, inserting your text in random places. The chapter titles aren’t pinned to the start of the chapter so as soon as you add a sentence at the beginning of the book they’re all off. The wraparound doesn’t take effect until the line is off the page at the bottom, and then when you delete the carriage return, it doesn’t want to move your text to the top of the page. You wanna talk about inserting and adding photos? Forget about it. Better go fix a sandwich before you start. For some strange reason the pictures are extremely troublesome- I thought even Word had figured that part out back in ’94. Blurb’s service on the publishing side is great, so they must have said, “Yeah, go find some community college programming dropouts to kludge something together on the front end, so the customer’s experience with our company is frustrating from the outset”
I agree that Blurb is a bummer. I’m only looking for a download link and they are
giving me everything but a copy of blurb software. I don’t have time for this. FedEx should look into advertising for these guys. They send a bad message , it is called (lying).
So far I’ve put together my 60 page book on Booksmart with no problems at all. I have a Dell PC. I was able to download the program very quickly. I find images pop into place in a fraction of a second, I can choose any text page or photo page and quickly fill it. I did a search cause I want to get rid of text wrapping from one page to the next, but can’t figure out how to do that. I’m a little nervous about the final product cause I’ve read mixed reviews about the actual quality of the book. Gonna give it a try though. But as far as the actual application, Booksmart works like a dream, it’s fun and fast and so far easy to figure out. This is my first time to try to publish an online book.
thanks,
Joan
So slow as to be worthless. I don’t know who these lying bastards are saying the program works, must work for the company or something.
First of all, I don’t know why ANYONE would have created a book making tool that does not include something so obviously necessary as page breaks. It will not add page breaks, it will not copy/paste page breaks, and it will not import page breaks from a .doc file. It says it will, but it’s lying.
Impossible to get your text or photos to line up. Spent hours fighting with the damn thing. Gave up.
Customer support will tell you to break your text up into individual bite-sized pieces and import it that way, but after wasting your time chopping up your book you will find it doesn’t make a bit of difference. It wouldn’t even import my .doc files at all!
Please, someone suggest a book-making program that actually works.