Please include the site/company you used and as much information as you can to describe your experience, and whether you’re happy with it or not.
I started out with Blurb. They were great for a while, but steadily increased their prices. Then when they lowered the quality and charged extra for “premium,” I started looking around.
I went with Magcloud next (owned by HP) and they were GREAT for a while, but then blurb bought them. ACK! Other than that the only downside with Magcloud was that I had to buy software to create the book, where Blurb had that built in. Now that Blurb owns Magcloud, that may have changed.
So my latest adventure has been with a local printer. I was able to get the books for less $. The only downside is I had to order a whole bunch to make the prices low. Blurb and Magcloud were able to print on demand AND they handled all the sales. They just sent me a check every month. So I used the sales data from Blurb and Magcloud and figured out how many books I could expect to sell in a year - and ordered that amount. I have to do all the shipping myself, which is kind of a pain, but worth the lower prices I can offer my books for. I use the Daily Paintworks store option to sell them, which has been great.
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I started with Blurb also and liked their software and paper weight they use in the books, but they are expensive and I’ve been looking elsewhere to publish my books. I have a embroidery pattern book published through Create Space on Amazon and have been happy with that.
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I’m REALLY hoping a company comes along soon that will compete with Blurb (with lower prices). And that Blurb won’t just buy them too!!!
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My experience is similar to Carol’s. I started out with Blurb and did a small book of drawings. Sold a few but pricing was too high. Then I did a large “coffee table” book concentrating on my watercolor art. It was priced out of the ballpark, so I only sold two and bought a few myself for promotional purposes. I tried Kindle and Amazon Createspace and occasionally get a small residual from those. I also use Createspace for manufacturing my music CD’s.