Yikes! Our latest Blurb book just arrived and it looks like crap

[aphex]

All the previous blurb books looked great, did they change something in the last year?

The cover came out all washed out, almost as if the printer was running out of ink. Some of the pages have creases on them, like they got stuck in the printer while printing. The pages even feel quite a bit thinner than the last book we printed.

Really not impressed at all, in fact I feel completely ripped off.

I just sent them an e-mail complaining about the quality of this last book, hope they can reprint it or make it right. I'm kinda shocked they even shipped this with how bad it looks.

 

[Aharami]

i had to go thru two reprints before I got one I liked. But then again I was being anal as it was an anniversary gift for my then gf (now wife). I still wasnt 100% happy with the final copy i kept, but wife thought it was the best gift ever. So it all depends I guess.
Their print quality isnt top notch, but then again for the money, they are the best value. Recently they added a heavier paper option...havent tried that but should fix most of the complaints - paper quality. Have to say though, their customer service is pretty good. When i wasnt happy with the reprint of the original book, they gave me credit to upload a new book and print that. My initial books came out too dark, even after I color corrected using their ICC profile, using a calibrated monitor.

 

[aphex]

I did a side by side comparison of the front cover and a page inside; (both the exact same picture, different crop)
Side by Side

The back cover came out horrid as well;
Back Cover (Far from being black, colors are way off)
Closeup of Back (Nice stripes)

 

[GTaudiophile]

Hmmm. I did two books with them in NOV and DEC of last year. I also used ImageWrap on both, and they came out great.

Nothing like the banding you're seeing.

I used Premium Paper on both.

In terms of interior page quality, I guess I was 90% satisfied. Then again, I do some publishing work for my job and see a lot of stuff printed on Heidelberg, 4-Color Offset printers. I am not sure if Blurb used this level of printing.

Edit: I should also note that one of the books had B&W covers.

 

[aphex]

So this is the reply I just received;

n reviewing the images, I am not able to see any vertical lines on the front cover. Additionally, I don't feel that a direct reprint would deliver much different results. The cover and the guts are printed on two different machines and are two types of material/finish.

Seriously? She can't see the problems from the pictures I sent?

 

[Aharami]

post and complain about this on their forums. That usually seems to get the problem resolved.

Also, after looking at your pictures, I dont see a problem with the front cover (or it's not apparent in the image you provided. Yea, the inside page looks, what's the word....less hazier? than the front cover, but this is due to their imagewrap cover style. They use some kind of a matte plastic over the cover to protect it which takes away from some of the saturation and detail. This has been discussed in blurb forums and as such, when I made my book, I upped the cover's saturation by quite a bit.

I can definitely see the problem you described in the back cover though