Blurb introduced their layflat photo books late last year, and I've been keen to try them. When Blurb reached out to me recently to review another one of their products, I was keen to take them up on the offer.

We enjoyed a family holiday in the state of Victoria earlier this year, so I created a photo book using photos from that holiday. The book was created using Blurb's BookWrite software, which has improved somewhat since I previously wrote about it.

A couple of restrictions that I encountered with Blurb's layflat photo books:

• The only paper option is the "Standard Layflat" paper; you cannot select any other paper type.
  
  
• There's no option for a black logo page. As I wanted the pages in my book to have a black background, my only options were to have a white logo page at the end of the book (which would look weird), or pay an extra $10 to remove the logo page.

I ordered the layflat book using the economy shipping method (the cheapest), and it took one month for the book to arrive, with the ebook arriving on the exact day that Blurb indicated it would.
In comparison, a non-layflat photo book from Blurb, ordered at around the same time, took just 16 days to arrive.

front cover

front cover and spine

The book was securely packaged in a plastic bag, and then in a robust cardboard packing sleeve. After unpacking it, and looking through the book, my first impressions were:

• The cover has a soft "rubberish" feel to it. It's hard to describe, but it is nice to touch.
• The pages are much thicker than non-layflat Blurb photo books.
• The layflat book feels and looks much more "luxurious" and higher-end than regular (non-layflat) Blurb photo books.
• The surface of the pages is fairly matte - especially when doing a direct comparison to the premium lustre paper that I normally use for other Blurb (non-layflat) photo books.