SmugMug + Blurb Book partnership ...

David Tomic

Have I missed an announcment about this somewhere, because I'm struggling to find any information on the SmugMug website?

http://digital50.com/news/items/BW/2001/07/14/20071018005193/blurb-becomes-smugmugs-book-partner.html

Blurb, the creative book publishing service, today announced a strategic partnership with online photo sharing and photo storage application, SmugMug. This partnership lets SmugMug customers create, publish, share, market, and sell professional quality books.

Andy

Thanks for noticing! We'll have more here on Dgrin and SmugMug soon, but:

http://www.blurb.com/partner/smugmug

has some information for now

timnosenzo

SWEET!!

David Tomic

Andy wrote:

Thanks for noticing! We'll have more here on Dgrin and SmugMug soon

Seems a bit odd!

It's already been 4 days since the press release went out ...

--David Tomic
www.davidtomic.com

David Tomic

Anyway ... I've had a quick play, and - as it stands - the "integration" with SmugMug seems to be half-baked at best! And that's putting it nicely...

I know that I'm kind of boxing with shadows here, since SmugMug haven't put out any real information on how all this actually ticks, but one thing strikes me as alarming right off the bat.

When you're importing photos, why on earth does it need to download the full res original files?

That seems to me like it's criminally inefficient, since you're NEVER working at anywhere near that resolution within the Booksmart app, and it also means that it takes an absolute ETERNITY to import your shots before you can actually start working on them.

I haven't placed an order yet, but would I be wrong in assuming doing that involves uploading all those files again to some Blurb server for processing?

[That seems to be the only logical reason I can come up with for requiring that you download the full res photos in the first place.]

It SHOULD only download medium sized files, which are MORE than adequate for setting out your page layout etc, and then have Blurb pull the full res photos direct from SmugMug for processing once you actually place your order.

I REALLY hope that I'm going to be proven wrong on that, but in case I'm not, then I'm a loooooong way from being impressed with this! It seems to be nothing more than the standard Blurb service, with one of those free SmugMug stickers slapped across it.

Andy - and anyone else who might be reading - I hope that you can accept this as constructive criticisim, because that's really all I'm trying to give here.

--David Tomic
www.davidtomic.com

LouBuonomo

I was wondering why the Blurb guys had Smugmug camera straps at PhotoExpo ? I forgot to get one

DJT

I was "volunteered" at our Church to get the Photo Directory put together. It was a downloaded software from the photographers. Anyhow, all photos that were used in it were HUGE. I did a custom cover that I made and it was 2000+ by ???? pixels.

As for the photos inside, For the photo to come out a half page, I believe it was the full high resolution photo (8mp).

What is like a thumbnail photo on smugmug, in print form for the directory they were 640x??? photos.

mrcoons

It will be interesting to see how this works out. I have used Blurb to create my books for the last year and have been very satisfied with the results. But uploading photos to them was a real chore - so if I can use photos I have already uploaded to Smugmug I will be one happy camper!

David Tomic

mrcoons wrote:

But uploading photos to them was a real chore - so if I can use photos I have already uploaded to Smugmug I will be one happy camper!

So would I ... but as of right now that doesn't look to be the case at all, which is really quite disappointing IMHO.

I don't find this complete silence from SmugMug to be particularly reassuring either.



--David Tomic
www.davidtomic.com

Andy

David Tomic wrote:

I don't find this complete silence from SmugMug to be particularly reassuring either.



--David Tomic
www.davidtomic.com

Your continued patience is appreciated, David. Thanks....

mrcoons

So I downloaded Blurb's latest version of BookSmart to see what has changed. No visible changes were apparent so I searched for "Smugmug" in their Help document and found this:

How do I add SmugMug pictures?
To import SmugMug pictures, click the Get Pictures button in the My Pictures area and choose the SmugMug option. A SmugMug wizard will open and request your SmugMug username and password for authentication. Next, a SmugMug browser will open and ask for approval to download your images to BookSmart. Once this is done you’ll go back to the SmugMug wizard and choose the pictures you’d like to download. Once downloaded, all your SmugMug pictures will be stored in the My SmugMug Pictures library in BookSmart.

This is what I was hoping for!! Now I need to try it out and see how it works!!!! :ivar

urbanaries

mrcoons wrote:

So I downloaded Blurb's latest version of BookSmart to see what has changed. No visible changes were apparent so I searched for "Smugmug" in their Help document and found this:

How do I add SmugMug pictures?
To import SmugMug pictures, click the Get Pictures button in the My Pictures area and choose the SmugMug option. A SmugMug wizard will open and request your SmugMug username and password for authentication. Next, a SmugMug browser will open and ask for approval to download your images to BookSmart. Once this is done you’ll go back to the SmugMug wizard and choose the pictures you’d like to download. Once downloaded, all your SmugMug pictures will be stored in the My SmugMug Pictures library in BookSmart.

This is what I was hoping for!! Now I need to try it out and see how it works!!!! :ivar

OMG I am so excited for this! I am selling a lot more blurb books lately and this is one step in that direction!!!! WOOT!

Can we COLLECT funds for blurb books for smugmug though? That would make things utterly seamless for clients.

Ham1

urbanaries wrote:

OMG I am so excited for this! I am selling a lot more blurb books lately and this is one step in that direction!!!! WOOT!

Can we COLLECT funds for blurb books for smugmug though? That would make things utterly seamless for clients.

The current SmugMug/Blurb partnership is pretty simple. SM doesn't offer our own books so we push you to Blurb. We make it very easy for you to slurpe your photos into the Blurb software. Blurb will handle all the customer support and selling of the books.

You can continue to sell your books on Blurb (with SM photos) and make 100% commission on the markup. Neither SM or Blurb will take any commissions on the books you sell.

Enjoy!
Markham

mrcoons

Ham1 wrote:

The current SmugMug/Blurb partnership is pretty simple. SM doesn't offer our own books so we push you to Blurb. We make it very easy for you to slurpe your photos into the Blurb software. Blurb will handle all the customer support and selling of the books.

You can continue to sell your books on Blurb (with SM photos) and make 100% commission on the markup. Neither SM or Blurb will take any commissions on the books you sell.

Enjoy!
Markham

It's the best of both worlds in my opinion!

FormerLurker

This is great in theory, as I have created/ordered several Blurb books over the
past couple of years, and think the quality is great.

However.... Blurb's customer service is horrible, especially compared to SM's. Your production time with Blurb depends on where you live and they make no effort to publish anywhere close to their advertised "estimated" dates. Not a single one of my orders has been within 2 weeks of their promised time.

I would urge SM not to get too closely aligned with them unless their customer service begins to approach SM's standards.

Shima

I'm pretty excited about since I read about it in my blurb newsletter email today. Looking forward to finding our more information on the smugmug end of things.

Elaine

Does the Smug Slurper also collect the Smug caption (if you want to) that goes along with the photo? I'm guessing not but hoping so! It would be so nice to put together a book along with the captions I've already included in my Smug gallery!

PS - Thanks for making a book option available!!!

darryl

Man, it would be so cool to use Blurb or something similar to do "memory books" for my son's preschool. (Ugh -- scrapbooking? Puh-leeze.)

In fact, in anticipation for the mandatory (it's a co-op school, so the parents have "assignments" too) memory book, I hacked together a whole convoluted comments->keyword system just to get non-uploading parents to tag the names of the kids so that they'll be easier to find later.

http://gladlee.smugmug.com/gallery/3669791

So guess what's missing from the Blurb->SmugMug integration? Yep -- searching by keyword. Drat. Of course, searching isn't available in the API at all, so uh, not surprising that Blurb couldn't implement it.

Suck.

I guess we'll be saving all keyworded photos to hard drive, printing them at CostCo and then pasting them into scrapbooks after all. :-{

OOOF, that just made me realize -- there's no way to bulk download keyword matches. Ummmm, I sense another hack coming up. UGH.

(Of course there's no bulk download in the SmugMug UI at all, which makes some sense from a Pro standpoint, but *no* sense from a family-sharing standpoint. Phanfare offers a very nice "download all images as a zip archive" option. No keywords though. :P)

dimples453

hmm....
As this is in the "pro sales forum" I'm going to have to go against the tide here. Blurb is more of a consumer outfit that is geared toward "consumers". If their book quality were akin to something like what Asuka offers than I would be jumping for joy but again Blurb books are not professional quality by any stretch of the imagination (and if I offended anyone who offers these books to their clients I apologize in advance). I think this is a good first step in partnering with a book binder but it would have been nice to step up the bar a little and at the least partner with one that caters to professionals and not consumers at large. I'm writing this from purely a business standpoint.

pilotdave

I was really excited to see this partnership, but after playing around I am realizing that this just does nothing for me.

It seems that blurb can, very slowly, grab pictures from my smugmug site. And that's the entire extent of the integration. Big deal... I have my pictures on my hard drive and can put them in a blub book a whole lot more quickly than trying to download them from smugmug.

The nice thing is that I could create a blub book with my pictures from anywhere in the world... kind of nice. But I have a blurb project in the works right now and this just adds nothing.

Seems like both companies get some exposure by sharing their names and putting out press releases, but from a user standpoint this is almost meaningless.


I'll be impressed when smugmug lets my users choose a bunch of pictures and order them bound together in a very simple spiral-bound book or album.

Blurb books are cute and I sold a bunch of them once, but this is a FAR cry from smugmug offering photo books.

Good effort though! I appreciate that smugmug is listening to what customers want.

Dave

pspphotos

My experience with Blurb
I was very excited to begin using Blurb. I do sports photography, youth baseball mostly. My first test came out just fine - so I started offering the leagues books with my products. Of course, that's when all the problems hit. First of all, the only way to communicate is by email - there are no phone numbers. Second, they don't always come from the same place, nor does it ship the same way (packaging) from each place. When I got my first book (after about 3 weeks of waiting) the book was damaged due to very poor packaging. Since Blurb doesn't have a phone number, I had to email my problem. When I got my first email answer, they asked me to send them pictures of the damaged book and to mail them back my damaged book BEFORE they would consider doing a reprint for me. This did not make my customer very happy, considering the book was already late in the first place. When I got my second copy, about two more weeks later, my customer had already lost interest in the book - so I didn't get to sell it. After keeping the book for about 3 days, I noticed the quality of the paper was not very good. The book just started to curl up. I had to keep placing it under heavy books to keep it flat. I know it can't be blamed on weather here in SoCal - we're not extreme on either side. Basically, the quality is fine if you just plan on keeping for yourself, but I WILL not sell this since it is a sub-par product and reflects badly on me.

onethumb

darryl wrote:

So guess what's missing from the Blurb->SmugMug integration? Yep -- searching by keyword. Drat. Of course, searching isn't available in the API at all, so uh, not surprising that Blurb couldn't implement it.

Searching via the API has been there for years. Check your facts.

Ham1

LouBuonomo wrote:

I was wondering why the Blurb guys had Smugmug camera straps at PhotoExpo ? I forgot to get one

Hey Lou, that was me handing out those straps. You should have come by and shaken my hand!

Hope your club is going well.

Markham

darryl

onethumb wrote:

Searching via the API has been there for years. Check your facts.

ORLY? Where is it in the docs? :-}

I only see this:
http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/API/APIFeatureRequests

smugmug.images.search (not likely, since you can get this via feeds already... do we need to duplicate effort like that? -Don)

And this:
http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/Feeds/FindFeeds

Feeds are only available for public, non-passworded galleries.

cdonovan

Blurb and Smuggers?
Just found this on the Blurb site!!!

Exciting!

If you’re on SmugMug, get ready to slurp your photos
Filed Under: Bookmaking Tools, Photography, Blurb Alert | | October 26th, 2007
Good news for everyone on SmugMug… we got you a Slurper just in time for the holiday bookmaking rush.
If you’re already there, then you know how fantastic it is. If you’re new to it, check out their online photo sharing and photo storage application. It’s 200 million photos strong and growing.
Blurbarians can use Blurb’s SmugMug Slurper to connect to a SmugMug account and automatically slurp photos as full-resolution images into BookSmart’s image library. Then, view your SmugMug photos by tag or gallery, and autoflow or drag and drop them into layouts.
Since we know how collaborative the SmugMug community is, we think you’re also going to dig Blurb’s new Community Book feature. Team up with your friends or photography colleagues to make a book together. You’re already sharing your photographs. Adding a book to the mix increases your exposure and creative options.
We’ll be looking for your books in the Blurb Bookstore. Tag ‘em SmugMug so we know who you are.
Posted by: Allison

GJMPhoto

Quality Questions going unaddressed
Smugmug-guys,
A bunch of questions / statements regarding the quality of the Blurb books have been raised in this thread over the past several days, none of which have been addressed by the smugmug guys...

SO, a simple yes / no question to each individual smugmug worker (Andy, Onethumb, Barbara, Devbodo, etc.):

Do you, as professionals, feel the quality of the Blurb book is up to your standard to be sold to your customers in the form of a professional representation of your photography? In other words, would YOU sell them to YOUR customers?

- Gary.

Andy

GJMPhoto wrote:

In other words, would YOU sell them to YOUR customers?

- Gary.

Hi Gary, we're still in the launch phase, we'll have plenty to say, trust me... Your patience is appreciated.

To directly answer your question: YES, sure I would. Have you ordered your test / sample book? What I think doesn't matter one bit, really, does it? What do YOU think after you have book-in-hand

GJMPhoto

What you think does matter

Andy wrote:

To directly answer your question: YES, sure I would. Have you ordered your test / sample book? What I think doesn't matter one bit, really, does it? What do YOU think after you have book-in-hand

Not to blow smoke in places that I shouldn't...but your opinion does matter - I respect your professionalism. There's nothing like a person's professional reputation to speak volumes about, well...in this case, 'volumes'!

- Gary.

Andy

GJMPhoto wrote:

Not to blow smoke in places that I shouldn't...but your opinion does matter - I respect your professionalism. There's nothing like a person's professional reputation to speak volumes about, well...in this case, 'volumes'!

- Gary.

Okay then Thanks!

Justiceiro

I just used the slurper to upload a bunch of stuff to my current blurb project.

It's slow, but it works- and the slowness is likely due to crapy connection issues on my end.

The new release of blurb seems to have unscrewed whatever was causing my book to freeze up, and the latest edition, on my ever so sweet an mac-licious machine, is tossing around the 170+ page book like it was nuttin'. Pretty good stuff. I'm sure you PC guys are suffering but, much like Nikon users, you ultimately deserve it.

Only one serious issue: Can we put our books up for sale through our own pro web site at smugmug? I am going to be gettign my own domain name and using my smugmug site as my main selling platform. I doubt anybody will pony up $100 or so for a random travel book on Uzbekistan i just because they saw it in blurb's bookstore. Are there any plans for that sort of thing?

photocat

I had a go at it on saturday, and it takes AGES to slurp the pics from my smugmug account. I did not finish it as it took way too long for me. I want to do the books fast, I used to work as a paper layout woman, so I know what I am doing. Waiting that long to get my pics in the application from Blurb is too counter productive.
Now what I would really like would be for Smugmug to work with mypublisher.com. I have done a lot of mypublisher.com, and the quality is very very good. I sell them to my customers who can't afford a 800 dollar wedding book. I sell it for 400 dollars. More or less... And the people are happy with the publisher books. Sad thing is that you can't make a store on my publisher.
I think that a combination Smugmug and publisher.com would be a far better combination then Blurb. Blurb then has the possibility for us to make a profit on the books. But how long will that profit last if the books are not good quality? I will await further news from Smugmug on this subject. We are on broadband BTW, so the downloads should go a lot faster then what the speed is now... My two cents...