Like many great companies before it, Blurb was actually started by accident. In the early 2000s, Eileen Gittins, Blurbs’ Founder, rekindled a passion for photography while trying to figure out her next career gig.
She wanted to compile her photos into a nice coffee table photo book, but she only wanted to print a handful of copies. The conundrum was that every publisher was quoting her hundreds of dollars for each book! She found this curious – and frustrating. So she asked herself, are there other people like me who want to affordably create their own high-quality book from their photos? The answer, of course, was yes, and it changed her life – and book publishing – forever.
In 2006, Eileen launched Blurb, a simple book-designing platform and a publishing process that could quickly produce beautifully made books at game-changing price.
Everyone from award-winning photographers, to couples wanting to commemorate the birth of their child started using Blurb – and they continue to do so today. Even after almost a decade, people are still blown away by Blurb’s user-friendliness, quality, and affordability. People trust Blurb to create every kind of book imaginable, including:
- Cookbooks
- Photo books
- Yearbooks
- Ebooks
- Magazines, and more
Blurb doesn’t just help people make books and magazines, they also help market them by providing publishers with their own dedicated sales page. Blurb’s dedicated sales pages allows authors to:
- Make their book or magazine available to the public or by invitation-only
- Write a compelling book description
- Customize a preview of their book
- Share their book with others on social media
Blurb also created their publishing platform to work seamlessly with Amazon and Apple iBooks Store so authors would have even more options for how they sell their books.
There are so many remarkable things to share about Blurb – too much for just one post! So keep an eye out for next week’s post because I’ll be sharing some of my favorite Blurb tools and tips — which, if you’re like me, will leave you thinking … “I didn’t know Blurb could do all that!”
Oh! And I almost forgot to mention that now through 4/28 you can get 20% off any book you create! Can’t wait to see what kind of book you create!
What Makes Us Sisters–Book Review