What is the optimum JPEG for a Blurb book?

[nemophoto]

Thank you, Nemo.  My JPEGs were indeed RGB and had the green to magenta cast Andrew prepared me for (#8 above; thank you, Andrew).

And further for Andrew (#10 above): I had put in a flat gray page, rather deeper than the endpapers’ 50% gray, and it did show a subtle green/magenta streakiness.

I don't recall seeing in Blurb's advice pages anything about RGB vs. CYMK for the submitted files, but I will email them with my concerns about the color cast and see what they say.

I ended up going with an entirely different printer for larger runs of my book (though smaller format). You might look into Book1One. I also found printing was different on each format size from blurb. The better quality B&W was on the 10x12 hardback (though the dust jacket was "off") and the 8x10 hard cover self-cover. The worst was on the 8x10 soft cover.

[David Eichler]

One issue is covers are printed on a different kind of digital press; getting it to match the inside is tough.

. While I have seen this difference in the past with Blurb, recent printings do not exhibit this discrepancy with the image wrap cover.

[Jeffrey Saldinger]

Over the past several days I had a pleasant email exchange with Blurb customer service about my non-uniform black and white images in the book they sent me.

What I saw in the book was consistent with what I’d been prepared for by some of the responses in this thread, and the final reply from Blurb did honestly say that “some color shift is normal” by virtue of their “use [of] color printers for all [their] printing.”

They generously offered to try a reprint, along with a caveat that that might not make any difference, but for now at least I’m not going to spend more time on this with them.

[nemophoto]

I'm not surprised that there were "color shifts". I found that the different book sizes also affected color outcome because based on paper weight and size, different printers are used. I've found some of their printers (talking about the actual company, not the press) are better at optimizing their output. I had an 8x10 hardback-self cover of my book printed and the cover and interior were among the best results. This is also why I recommend setting B&W as CMYK rather than RGB.

[Jeffrey Saldinger]

I'm not surprised that there were "color shifts". I found that the different book sizes also affected color outcome because based on paper weight and size, different printers are used. I've found some of their printers (talking about the actual company, not the press) are better at optimizing their output. I had an 8x10 hardback-self cover of my book printed and the cover and interior were among the best results. This is also why I recommend setting B&W as CMYK rather than RGB.

Thank you, Nemo. 

As John Beardsworth has pointed out above (#18), if I use Lightroom then I can send only RGB files, not CMYK.  As I understand it, if I used InDesign I could send CMYK files to Blurb and might get a better result.  I don't use InDesign, so for now I'm going to consider my Blurb book a nice first maquette that got me thinking about things I might do in a book.

Blurb customer service did send me, without my asking, a reprint at no charge, and it was better with respect to neutrality.