Concept Book – A Mankovich History
I reviewed a number of web sites that claimed to allow content (mostly pictures) to be assembled into books and printed. For the family history, I settled on Blurb. In February and March of 2008 I quickly assembled a book from the materials I had on hand and ordered a copy. I created a 90 page plus large landscape format (13″x11″) book. It arrived within 10 days. Conclusion: (1) large format is too expensive for the 150+ pages I was planning, (2) binding is thin and quickly warps, (3) image quality is great, (4) dust jacket is great. I archived this book and did not distribute beyond 1 copy.
Draft Books – A Mankovich and Petrick Family History
When developing the book content we ordered two hardcover small landscape (10″x8″) copies of each of our Blurb books in mid-July (in time for the Mankovich/Petrick celebration for Irene Mankovich). These books came quickly and were of an image quality comparable to the original Concept Book (one book was 100 pages, the other 206). Conclusions: (1) small format is adequate but increases page count, (2) the binding is thin and the front and back covers warp slightly, (3) the spine is poorly done and caused problems when closing the book, (4) dust jacket is great and smaller format easier to handle. The binding/spine difficulties are discussed on the Blurb forum pages here.
First Edition Books
We received our first copies of the published book on August 28. The now-218 page Mankovich/Petrick book and Irene M. Mankovich books arrived together. We have been poring through the MP book. In this copy, the image and print quality is significantly less than in the previous books. The images are a bit muddy but acceptable. Clearly, the earlier printing was superior. We suspect that it may vary quite a bit and we have now seen, we hope, the extremes. They are not bad enough to send back. The binding is considerably better on the MP book. The binding is much thicker and the spine problem seems to have been resolved (likely as a result of Blurb customer feedback). We ordered the hardcover and the softcover (we don’t yet have experience with the Image Wrap books). The hardcover seems durable but the soft cover has already had two pages release from the binding. The pages are sewn-in and glued – this happens when you go over 200 pages. However, it seems that the cutting of the softcover spine edge was too close to the sewing and the pages barely had any fixation beyond the sewing holes. Thus they just popped out in regular use. We will send this back. Also, the softcover immediately began to curl up in our August Northeast muggy weather.
If you are dissatisfied with the quality of the softcover First Edition, please complain to Blurb and, I believe, they will extend credit.
Again, the hardcover is good and seems to work well. Blurb will refund books that disappoint and we will see how that goes when we complain about the soft cover.
Second Edition Book
Just a note while I am on the topic of the MP book. Being the obsessive/compulsive folks that we are, we are noticing some small typographical errors and other aesthetic elements that can be improved. Therefore, we are doing a quick update to the book and, when ready, will upload it to the Blurb web site (completed at 5:00 PM EDT Labor Day, September 1, 2008). This means that some folks who ordered early will get the First Edition and others who order after September 1 will get the Second Edition. We have documented all the corrections/improvements here and will publish those here as soon as we issue the Second Edition. I have also added a “A Reflection by Nick Mankovich” and that text can be seen here.
Because of (1) curled covers, (2) loosened and separated pages, and (3) the fact that the good text on the dust jacket flaps is not present, we have decided to discontinue offering the soft cover edition.
