Blurb’s BookSmart

With $2MM in Series A funding, Blurb has introduced its BookSmart product to enable ordinary people to produce sophisticated bound books. Unlike photo albums produced with products like iPhoto, Blurb’s product helps produce books based around a variety of content types like cookbooks, portfolios, baby books, and, yes, photo books.

Even blog books are supported. In fact, using a slurping technique where it’ll scrape content from any RSS source, BookSmart can, almost instantly, produce a book that, in their words, captures your online wit and wisdom for posterity. Imagine if Robert and Shel, or their publisher, had used this to produce
Naked Conversations?

Its interface is a stylish Win32 application with the look of a polished product from Apple. Built-in layout and simple photo editing tools make assembly straightforward.

Opinion
Its interface looks slick. Having produced many iPhoto books, I can tell you there’s an almost magical feel creating your own hardcover book. Blurb’s product goes way beyond what you’ll find with an iPhoto or similar photo book assembling product. Its demo went beautifully and this looks like a great product.

[tags]books,publishing,demo2006,photo book,blurb,booksmart,blog book[/tags]