Overall the experience was quite good. And when I had questions I was quickly put in touch with a real person using the help chat on the website, they were nice and answered all my questions very simply and straightforward with no fuss. Which gave me more confidence in the formatting of the files to upload. As someone who hates talking over the phone, it was a godsend to be able to just pre prepare all my questions and send them over and it was all answered in just a few minutes.
It was also nice that the files for printing didn't need any special added margins or or templates or anything. I know one other place I looked at required an extra 0.5 inches to width and height beyond the desired print size. Which can be a real hassle to do if your document is already laid out and isn't in a program that let's you do this easily. And of course, editing PDF's directly is a less than enjoyable task.
And thankfully, the books themselves came out great with a nice matte finish on the cover, and crispy inside printing for text and grayscale images all perfectly placed on the page as expected. At a reasonable price for a small run of books as well.
That said, there's plenty of things to point out as nothing is perfect.
This stuff didn't quite make me feel it should go all the way down to four stars but here we go in excruciating detail because nobody ever said I wasn't thorough:
-The initial pricing calculator is very nice and straightforward to quickly see how much it will cost to get a book printed in the desired specs, and actual pricing was in-line with the initial quote. However it feels quite off and borderline sketchy that you have to put down at least a $100 deposit in order to save and move on with your project. I kind of understand, but this is still before anyone actually manually reviews your files or anything. You should really be able to save your project details and upload files and poke around the interface to get some confidence before having to put any money down. Maybe there's some technical or legal reason for this but other places I looked at didn't require anything like this. Ultimately it was fine, but it just *feels* wrong. It's a strange unexpected road block that I imagine throws many people off initially, and maybe for good. I'm sure site analytics would back this up. Additionally, while it seems the website is capable of remembering your quote calculations, I definitely ended up having to redo it a few times as it doesn't work well since it isn't really tied to your account or anything. It feels like one of those things that just shoved into a browser cookie and doesn't work half the time, but I didn't check. But, eh, it doesn't take that long to go back through and re-select everything. Could and should still be smoother though.
-The fees for needing to do revisions after the review process has started ($***) seem quite steep. I might've had to lower to four stars if I'd had to go through that process just out of saltiness. The staff are helpful though so it's not that big of a deal to just ask things and be really sure of what you're submitting before you do so, so I guess I can't recommend that enough. Though I almost feel like they should say that more directly. I think they were fairly clear about the fees if it was to be needed. But they should probably just say like 'don't hesitate to ask if you have any doubts on formatting etc.'
I'm fairly comfortable in photoshop and generally digitally and technically competent so after a few questions answered I was fairly confident in my submission and it went off without a hitch. But it's just that with already less than ideal guides and templates (as of writing this review) to help the less technically inclined, I'd think it'd be pretty easy to get it wrong on your first go of it, which is not a pleasant thing to go through when you're already struggling and stressing out about trying to finish a difficult and long winded project. Of course they offer a service to help lay out your files and stuff for you, but this can be costly for small timers like myself just wanting to get a small run done for friends etc, and just shouldn't be necessary if proper and well thought out tools are provided to give you the confidence to do it yourself.
-Somewhat unintuitive user interface for file submission. Once you upload a file, there's no way to remove it. It's perfectly fine to upload updated files if you have to correct something last minute (before actually submitting for review), but then there's duplicate versions of the same files in your list. And from a user experience perspective, it just isn't the most clear, again not inspiring confidence. It's jank at best.
There's also issues here with the upload file page having both a button to return to your project details and one to finish the submission and they weren't labeled the clearest honestly. I don't remember if the submit button had a confirmation prompt to help make sure you're actually ready but even so I could still imagine someone accidentally clicking through that way without really realizing and not being absolutely ready for it and potentially having to pay extra fees for revisions. Though I'd like to give the company the benefit of the doubt that if you did do that and at least caught it quickly you could notify them and it'd be ok. But, that shouldn't be the intended route.
For something like a final submission of a big order, it's okay to have that be really verbose and explicit and hard to do on accident. It's something you only do once so it can't get annoying. And I wouldn't think that (especially for small timers) you want that moment to feel a bit ceremonious anyway. I think they could go a ways towards making that whole experience a bit more personable and exciting rather than just very basic forms to upload files and submit.
-Also adjacently related is that after a day or so without submitting your files they'll send a rather scary looking warning just saying that your project is on hold because you haven't submitted the files. I kind of get it but it seems a little unnecessary and a bit spooky. It makes it seem like there's something wrong when there isn't. It feels like the system is set up like you only go through and make a project when you're already completely done and have everything to submit right away. But I think it's helpful just to sit on it for a hot minute just in case you realize something to fix, on top of just needing time to make sure your files and stuff are formatted right for the particular publisher. It almost seems a bit condescending because it's like, yeah.. I know I didn't submit them, because I was there, intentionally not doing it, because I wasn't ready.. Y'know? I get that isn't the intent, because I can easily see how someone might just upload the files and think that's all they had to do or maybe even forget and think it's submitted when it isn't. So maybe a nice compromise would just be to make the warning a bit more friendly so it doesn't seem so scary. You're already fairly on edge at that point stressed about your project and especially having already put a deposit down etc.
-Less than ideal cover templates, the provided ones only go up to like 440 pages or so, and being slightly over that it was a little annoying to figure out. They do provide a spine width calculator and such that helps you figure this out but being an interactive pdf (who knew those even existed?) it's a bit jank and doesn't exactly inspire confidence in your measurements. I found I had to double click the calculate button to be absolutely sure all the fields updated. It also doesn't export any guides so you have to construct the final piece yourself, but that's not that big of a deal.
-Lack of super clear instructions on some of the provided templates. Like some things seem to be implied rather than explicitly stated. Downloading a cover template seems to imply to submit the final work place inside of the template and there's special settings so that the guide elements aren't exported etc. But it's not explicitly stated and seems unintuitive to someone doing it for the first time. I always feel like such information should just be there for those who need it. It's like, there's a few very obvious questions that people when have when they look at it, and the answers to those questions should just be right there so you don't have to guess and stress about it. Also for someone just working in photoshop where importing a pdf basically just rasterizes it, such things are even more wonky to deal with. In the end I was just able to upload my art with all the correct dimension and extra bleed space added and it was fine so, it isn't that difficult. But I couldn't know this without directly asking someone first.
-The spec selection for choosing the properties of your book could be cleaner.
It's not bad, but it would be nice especially to be able to se example images of how the various options look. The results are nice so it's not like they have anything to hide. But it's more difficult to decide which aesthetic choices you want when there aren't clear examples to view. There's even videos technically put inside the more info tab but they just walk through the options listed on the webpage with no additional visual reference, basically just reiterating everything you could just read on the page. Especially just for like page and cover material options I feel it's crucial to be able to see some reasonable examples of finished products in those styles. You wanna know just how matte that matte finish is gonna be etc. What's there *is* helpful but it leaves a lot up to the imagination and again, does not exactly inspire confidence in your choices. I'd think this one could also scare some people away considering someone might not feel super comfortable picking choices without being as sure as possible what it will really look like.
-This is a real nit-pick but the name "48 hour books" is maybe a bit misleading as it's more of a compound thing, 48 hours for initial review and processing upon submitting your files, and another 48 hours to ship to you, not counting weekends. So all in all it was 6 days I think from submission to books on the doorstep. Which I mean, more than reasonable if we're being realistic. And it could've been 4 days if ordering at the start of the week. But it all went smoothly and on time so, impressive.
This sure was a lot and I'm not sure how useful it will be to anyone but I provide it mostly for the company themselves as I always like to see improvement, and actually striving to improve is the best way to gain respect as a company I think.
So many companies are happy to just sit on what they have that technically provides a viable and maybe even "good' experience, but it could still be a lot smoother. And in cases like this, I do think there's some things here that could lead to more sales if improved upon. So I would think there's a vested interest here.
I always feel like I'm missing something when writing reviews like this but w/e. I'm sure I covered all of the important things, and I hope these things can be worked on so I don't have to feel let down for misplacing my faith here. But I guess I won't lose any sleep at night about it either way lmao.
Anyway, while they're still a company working for profit, I can't help but appreciate the perfectly reasonable opportunity for me as a person with no prior writing or printing experience to get a well crafted physical edition of the last year of my life's work. It's a surreal feeling I'm not sure I'll ever get past but there it is, on my desk. Strange.
So take this review as thanks I suppose.
P.S. Maybe this gives an indication on how wordy my novel ended up being.. Oh well.
