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PROS:
CONS:
Blurb is a unique company that offers printing services and features you can’t find in most competitors. With this company, you can create not just personal photo books, but also magazines and e-books. You can upload your PDF from the computer and also use other programs such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The printing quality is impressive from cover to the inside pages and they ship internationally. What we didn’t like about them was the fact that they don’t offer phone support anymore and the fact that the online editor has quite a few limitations.
Blurb defines itself as a self-publishing and marketing platform. It was founded in 2005 and it is based in San Francisco, but has offices in UK, Germany and other European countries.
Blurb offers many printing services, not just for photo books, but trade books, magazines and e-books.
Although it doesn’t have the standard sizes available and it has fewer backgrounds to choose from, this printing service has some unique features and sizes for your projects and the printing quality is among the best we’ve seen so far. Moreover, Blurb allows you to upload your project as a PDF, or upload a Word and Google Docs, so you are not constrained to use exclusively their software. You can also use Adobe Indesign or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
Blurb lets you choose between portrait, square or landscape and your cover options are image wrap, soft or dust jacket. There are lots of paper types available, from standard semi-matte to premium lustre, matte, proline uncoated or proline pearl.
In terms of sizes, they are a bit different than what you have been used to. The standard portrait is 8X10, then there is small square (7X7), standard landscape (10X8), large square (12X12) and large landscape (13X11).
Books can have up to 440 pages and a minimum of 20.
If you don’t want to use other programs like Adobe InDesign or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, you don’t feel like downloading their software to your computer (the software is compatible with both PCs and Mac), you can use their online editor (Bookify) in order to create your photo book. With the online editor you can easily upload your images directly from your computer or from Facebook, Instagram, etc. There’s a drag and drop function that will significantly simplify your work and an autofill feature. What we didn’t like about this editor is the fact that it doesn’t allow you to make too many changes: you can’t change the templates, the size of the photo or add text wherever you want to. The templates and layouts are satisfying enough, but the fact that you can’t personalize them for your own taste is quite annoying. However, if you download the software, you will have more options available than with the online editor.
If you don't feel like doing everything by yourself, the most luxurious option is to hire one of their experts from the Dream Team, who will help you with anything: design, editing and so on.
The printing quality is quite remarkable, from the cover to the thick, high quality pages inside and the professionally looking binding. Simply put, your photo book will look like it was just bought from a library.
When it comes to shipping, Blurb offers international shipping and the average delivery time for photo books is 7 to 11 business days, depending on the delivery method you choose. Printing and binding take approximately 4-5 business days.
You can track your order by logging into your account and entering the order number and they also have overnight shipping, for urgent orders.
Blurb has a shipping calculator on the website, which lets you get an estimate of your shipping price.
You can access it here: http://www.blurb.com/shipping
Blurb has a useful pricing calculator on their website. Prices start at $14,99 for a 20 pages softcover photo book in small square (7X7) and any additional page is $0.20. A proline pearl with 20 pages, with a hardcover, dust jacket in a large landscape (13X11) will cost you $84.99. Additional pages will be $0.70 per page.
Check out their pricing calculator here: http://www.blurb.com/pricing#/
There are also volume discounts available, up to 25% for more than 50 books ordered.
Social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlurbBooks
Unfortunately, when it comes to ways of contacting them, Blurb discontinued phone support. You can only reach them via email, which is not always an ideal option.
They try to compensate that with a very solid help center, full of tutorials and information on various topics such as: creation tools, order and shipping, sharing and selling and so on.
Our editorial staff evaluates products and services independently, but Best Review Guide may earn money when you click on links. Read our advertising disclosure.
By: Cristina | Last updated July 12, 2017 
