A few weeks ago I finished making my first ever photography zine that is now available for public. I made it with the Bookwright software through Blurb.
I used and continue to use Blurb to make personal family photo books and I’m really satisfied with the quality. They tend to be a little pricey but it all depends on what paper, what format you choose for your book. And by signing in to Blurb, you get promotional deals in your mail box very often. I’m talking about 20% and up to 50% off your books which is awesome to be honest.
My strategy at the moment is to have a book ready (or nearly ready) so that when I receive the deal from Blurb, I can just finalise my book and order as the deal lasts only for limited time.
Yes, I know, everybody is a photographer and a self publisher nowadays but I’m all for it. I think we should embrace the freedom of creating our own stuff and actually publishing something we care about and spent time working on. We are pretty lucky with all these tools available for us to do that.
I had that idea for photo series a few months back and it feels good to finalise it and see it in print. No, it’s not perfect, I didn’t aim for it to be perfect. I had a vision of how I wanted it to look and with Blurb – it made it possible.
My first zine is 56 pages long with 33 images. I’ll leave the link here for detailed preview.
I used standard b&w paper, ordered 3 copies and it cost me 30 euros including the postage fees (using 30% deal).
If any of you guys have used Blurb for zines or photo books, what do you think? Are you happy with what you get or would you recommend alternative bookmaking sites?
Thank you for visiting and till very soon
yuri rasin photography 
hi Yuri !
20% and up to 50% off when you purchase not less than $100 or something and not for a single book.
i published twice there. i purchased some amount but i set very low profit – i wanted to lower the whole price.. so, to say that i earned something – i can’t.
also about an amount of images (pages) there is some good price until 40 pages and much more expensive when you go to more images.
about softcover. a first book i printed in all available options and the soft one was a fail. if you put one image to 2 pages – you never can see the whole image because of method of gluing.
have a nice day
Victor
Hi Victor,
The deals seem to work for me every time i ordered books.. be it hardcover or softcover zines (made samples before).. in this case – it should have been around 45 euros but i payed 30 so thats great.
At the moment, i really enjoy making these little books and not looking for profit, it just feels good to have a physical product and to be able to look at it whenever i want ( give as a gift etc.)
I like their printing quality, sure, sometimes its not exactly how you want it but overall – good stuff.
Thank you for your comment Victor !
Very welcome Yuri
Do you know of a better way to self publish victor? I’m thinking mostly for personal use (a single book for family and friends) but also with an eye on the future.
I observed ecac opposit…the more pages the better price…. i compared 140 page book on two services – Blurb and Cewe Photobooks. Blurb was much cheaper if you print many pages…
Thanks for the info
2 years ago i was interviews for Refractions magazines, it was published on blurb…I order a copy… take a look.. https://p4.zdusercontent.com/attachment/219826/t7ncaUMhD3Bm2ogMYOvLlKDfV?token=eyJhbGciOiJkaXIiLCJlbmMiOiJBMTI4Q0JDLUhTMjU2In0..x0d1b2Vwrqk4q_D79f-kVA.oXZ2d3r09UNztKRmf-LQSuNlM16ghb8PMYvIgRmWQDefvlRICg0M3YvgGwaXDDLMbALFQRAqBTDx8H7Vk06WAp499nURfEen7FTSqUJFE5_wmU-c1NVkPeA4CwMjTnW_BoL6XHJ0ucjwRCiuga-XW-wce4ewC5gKhTbZ4bS3WJQeOU0Z60V6alDuf26N_tRLPe1UEgp9Aj1g97jpAWnV8bOM9qASd7BYg1CfluUfRkTHcKF_OBPrJ7eQbWrJ_Up_jZJ-NZ7k9OxEzQdznCjBiQ.jbUH7lP_qsoCmavAjXy7Og
Thats a cool effect! I seriously thought at first that it was intentional 🙂
Me too, Blurb made me new copy for free…. and…with same print error…
Oh no…
I checked the preview, the layout and style looks good. When you talked about Zine I thought you are going to make a magazine. But this looks more personal.
Thanks for looking Pavel. I checked out few zines earlier and some of them have no words at all. And I’m very reluctant to put my own words on paper ( i’m no writer ), so in this case I used a beautiful poem in the beginning that fitted the atmosphere which i tried to show.
I will keep on experimenting thou, might find something inetersting to write about, you never know…
You are writer, because you write on digital paper. Don’t you?
I do, but still on paper it is kinda more official and also permanent.
Basically, the idea was that as you keep flicking pages – you spin the book (as a spider spins its cob )..
I like blurb too because it allows me to painlessly create some nice printed stuff with my photographs. I did one book so far, and the only negative point is that it’s quite expensive when you use nice photo paper and a book format – I’ll have to hunt for the deals!
Anyways, great book and I love the idea of the rotating book!
Yes thats true, the special deals come very handy on those occasions. Thanks for taking a look and kind words
Ordered a copy!
I downloaded the on-screen version but it won’t do justice to the amazing-turning-book trick!
I think you’re officially the first buyer, so thanks so much for your support Frank and hope you enjoy it!
Looking forward to getting the book!
Bravo, Yuri. It looks fantastic.
Thanks Angel. Appreciated