Photo Books - wide difference in price, is it worth it?

[BunkerJones]

I've just done a project of photographing the village and area I live in, and posting the pictures on FBook in small batches. I'm now being asked to produce a Book of the Photo's to sell to those in the area.

I have over 240 pictures - but can whittle these down to about 50 or 60 Pages worth - on either 10x8 or A4 size pages. (Using Lightroom Book Module).

When I come to look at pricing for printing, I am in a quandry of which way to go.

DigitalPrinting.co.uk will produce A4 size books, with 300gm covers and 130gm pages, silk finish, 50 Pages and 30 Copies - for only £5.95 each

Every other place I've looked at, including Blurb, MyPhotoBook, BonusPrint, etc etc ...are looking at from £36 - £45 per book, same size, same paper etc.

Any idea why the big discrepancy - will I be disappointed with Digital - what can be so different?

I'm not looking to profit from this, just cover costs, so obviously I want the price as low as possible.

Anyone have any experience of producing this type of book ?

Phil

 

[Harlequin565]

Hi Phil,

In My Experience, print quality, paper quality, binding, and cover quality all vary enormously. I tend to use Mixam for zine stuff (lots of copies) and Blurb for one/two copy stuff. Blurb is reasonable for larger (bigger than A4) high quality books, whilst Mixam is much more reasonable for large volume, smaller sized "zines". Holding both side by side, I'd say Blurb has a more premium feel to it, and is better print quality, but for anything over 1-3 copies it's very very expensive and not "worth it" to me to use for a (example) zine run.

Ultimately though, your perception of quality is going to be different to mine. Any book publisher worth their salt will offer samples of their stuff and I'd suggest you getting samples run off to make the decision yourself. Mixam (for example) will do 50 copies of a 60 page A4 colour zine for £207 which is about £4 a go.

There is a zine thread here which has some good info regarding samples and advance colour work. I'm sure most of the folks on that thread would chuck their tuppence in if you wanted to know more.

 

[Cockney]

Hi Phil,
I don't know the answer to your question but from a marketing point of view. £6 is about what people expect to pay.
I am pc tech for our local historian/author and the local history society. Sub £8 is their target.
Just fwiw.

 

[BunkerJones]

Ian - Thank you so much for introducing me to Mixam - I have searched for days but not come across them - yet they are perfect for what I want. My other issue was using Lightroom Book module, which only had a 20cm x 25cm template - and Mixam allows this sizing. Just done a costing and they indeed are so reasonable - Thank you so much for htis.

Brian - That's great to know, I was thinking around that price, and that local history market is exactly what it's for.

Cheers both

Phil