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.

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.

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.