VioVio.com
One thing is - I don’t give up easy. After more googling until I was nearly blind, I came across the VioVio site which at least was nice enough to put disclaimers up about color issues, as well as saying up front that you’ll do better with b&w if you upload a grayscale image. Thank you. In fact, although their site is not as spiffy in terms of cosmetics - they’ve actually integrated context sensitive information. They tell you what paper will be used. They tell you that they’re using the iGen and [gasp] even give you the model number!
And they tell you that the quality is not going to be as good as an offset printer.
There are warning about expecting color issues between runs (although that shouldn’t be an issue if all the images are grayscale).
You get a PDF rendition, generated on the fly, and they accept PDF files if you just want to do the whole layout yourself in inDesign or something.
I did a ten page paperback, 7 x 9 with extremely badly designed cover and back. But enough to tell me about quality. So ever the optimist - I await the book once more.
* * *
Received email from VioVio saying that the book had gone to manufacturing. Estimated ship date is Oct. 2.
| The VioVio test book was shipped today, Sept. 25th. So already, they are twice as fast as blurb.com |
Comments
Comment from john c larson
Time: September 23, 2007, 8:17 pm
I’m interested in hearing of the finished product from VioVio.com as well.
One company I found in PDN is http://pikto.com/books/ The may be worth checking into.
Granted they are pricey, but maybe you’ll get what you pay for. I haven’t tried them myself yet, but I want to soon. Here’s a review that appears to be very positive:
http://luminous-landscape.com/reviews/accessories/pikto-books.shtml
Personally I don’t care much for Blurb. Their only advantage is their price. The binding quality varies and their software is tied to their printing which means dealing with software bugs is a real pain.
And yet another review but for a small run off-set print company that can make 100 books for less than $10k (about $82/book or $11.50 if you order 1000). May be worth checking out as well.
Comment from dave
Time: September 23, 2007, 9:38 pm
I haven’t tried pikto yet. Yes, much more expensive, but still feasible. If my math is right, a 40 page 6 x 8 hardcover is going to be about $100, a 40 page 8.5 x 11 hardcover will be about $115. (I’m assuming the setup fee of $25 is not per book but for copies of the same book?) I never went into this expecting to make a profit - but just to be able to do something of good quality that can be sold at a reasonable price. What a reasonable price is — remains to be seen.
I have seen 100 books before and looked at it again in my searches. I think to date they’ve published like 10 books or so. At any rate I don’t have 10K to lay out. And if I was going to lay out 10K, I’d wait until I had 30K and try and use a company like MeridianPrinting.com that specializes in this sort of fine art book (and I have a copy of Matt Webers book which was done by Meridian and it is glorious.) wwww.urbanphotos.com (Matt’s site).
Comment from Brandon
Time: September 24, 2007, 12:26 pm
I have been watching the printing book market over the last year and have been waiting for a good review of Viovio. I am looking forward to seeing what you think.
One man on Flickr said that his overall favorite was Apple, but runner up was Viovio.
Comment from Craig Nisnewitz
Time: September 21, 2007, 1:49 am
I have visited many blogs and the constant debate is whether better B&W
prints can be created by using a mix of color or using the grayscale
option for the printer. I have been printing B&W on the HP 8750 by
first creating a B&W file in RGB but than turning on the grayscale
function on the printer. The result is slightly better than printing
in color. VioVio.com may be right, color shifts maybe the by product
of printers that are not yet perfect. Too many factors are still
involved, including the paper used. I guess this is the problem with
technology that is still evolving, it takes a lot of experimentation
to get it right.
Hope the results with VioVio are better.