The SharedInk Photographer Program (you pay a one-time fee) and the cost of the books - is absolutely the best in terms of giving real information about how your books / images should be formatted. They are using a 4-color Indigo Press - and they tell you up front that there may be a slight cast when doing b&w through 4-color. How noticable it will be - I don't know but good for them - at least they address the issue up front. Yes, you can give them a grayscale file but you won't get the same richness. They even go into colorspaces, conversions from one space to another and all that other good stuff that I like to know rather than throwing my files into a black hole.
And - if you join the photographer's program you can even get a sample page from the press before the book is bound! What a concept.
So that's where it stands. I'm working on getting the files in proper shape and in a day or two should be able to finish and order the book. And oh - you can choose the type of paper you want - four types available. All of this is in the Photographer Program section. I think the business model is actually really good: one large area for the retail make your own baby book, and another smaller section with more options for professionals or just especially nitpicky people who will pay extra for more options.
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Here is a nature book printed by SharedInk.com
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Next up in the never ending quest for high-quality POD photography book is: SharedInk.com
"What is the cover label?
The cover label is an adhesive label, printed using the same 4-color true ink digital offset press that we use for the pages of the books. The covers of our books feature a recessed area in the cover where the cover label picture is affixed on top of the linen material. This means that the cover label lies flush with the rest of the book and is not raised. This recessed area adds quite a nice finishing touch, that is unique to SharedInk."
What is promising about SharedInk is that they are using ink on paper (as opposed to toner on paper) and they even give you a fair idea of what sizes and resolutions to use. Also as noted above, I'm guessing the overall quality is better and they even tell you the size of the book block etc.
Cost: twice as much as Snapfish, i.e. $39 for 20 images. But that's okay with me if overall print quality is what I'd call high-end-ish.
I wrote to Winkflash.com yesterday - trying to get a little bit of info about file formatting issues etc. but haven't heard anything from them. Winkflash - on screen - looks like a good deal but they don't tell you much about how they produce the book (what printer etc.) SharedInk even tells you stuff like effective lines per inch for their printer (which is helpful to me in terms of sharpening). That's all for now folks. I'm off to waste some more money probably.
BTW - it makes sense now - that most of these processes are going to be better than the Lulu experience (except for MyPublisher which I've only heard bad things about) because Lulu is not primarily for photobooks. They are a general POD company.
