My email address is easy to find or to guess (ton at blender.org), and I really appreciate feedback from customers!
I was also very disappointed with the printing quality.
Imagine the moment when the books came in here, I hired people to help carrying books, and to help shipping for three days. Everthing lined up for quick delivery, and then this…
My quick guess was that the book still is sufficient usable, although a couple of images are too bright to even see what they show. Instead of pictures that are clear in a glance, many pics in the book need careful examination to find out what they mean.
However, if this was simply a mistake to blame the printer for, I would have sent it back immediately. Instead, it’s a complex technological error which the printer blames on wrong delivery by the designers too…
Until now we’ve had a couple of dozen mails in, all from very happy customers. Only few mentioned the bright pictures, and none gave an indication the book was not usable for them. In contrary!
I now still wait for more feedback, especially from the people who worked on the book. Monday or tuesday I’ll make a final decision on this topic.
Nevertheless, the minimum any customer can expect is just the right to return the book and get full refund. Or return the book and get a new copy (when we reprint). Most likely - after a reprint - we’ll offer everyone who’s disappointed to get a new copy for cost price.
To make it possible I am negotiating with the printer now, who partially admits there some responsibility at their side.
I just hope discussions don’t go out of control here. Just communicate to us (me) first, and start ranting in public when we can’t offer you a good solution!
The e-shop said if u live in the Netherlands, then it’ll be delivered in 1-3 days. It’s the fifth day now and my book’s still not here. I’M GOING CRAZY!!! :x :<
I forgot-- I noticed some misspellings etc. on the sample pages posted a little while ago-- were these corrected in the final draft or will you be accepting error reports for future editions?
I have full confidence in all parties involved. I think a few test pages could have been in order before a full blown book printing took place, but too late now. The problem is that each image is a greyscale BW, and the rest of the pages are done with a single color of orange. When you try to print everything out just right the first time, things get crazy.
It’s safe to say things could have been avoided, but then agan hindsight it 20/20. %|
If my book is signed, it’ll outweigh any problems with the printing
Well, even with pictures THAT bright it still is a great book. I’ve been through some similar problems myselfs recently (printing for the masses is not as easy at it may seem), and it never comes down to just ONE person/group that made the mistake.
Also taking a closer look at the pictures seems to be revealing the almost hidden. An electronic version and/or a reprint for cost price would be great. I’m using it to full extend already and I’m not giving it away anymore.
I am still waiting for the guide, here in Montréal ; after communicating with many who got their guides, the problem with the images being overexposed doesn’t make the book unusable in anyway.
I expect that the internet version should be up soon enough to compensate that inconvenience and those other caused by the simple conversion to B&W from color.
Me again. Still don’t got it. If it doesn’t arrive in two weeks, they’ll send me another one, if my address is correct. And I think it is. I don’t get it. I’m supposed to get mine three days ago. :< :x
Why two topics about the book? Well, I’ll just repost:
I received the book a few days ago, I believe it was Wednesday (yes, I live in The Netherlands too). I was happy that it was signed, since I had pre-order no. 257, so I was kind of hoping that 7 people would not pay (in time), which apparently is the case. The book itself looks fantastic, though I agree that some of the pictures are a little hard to see because they are too bright. The full-colored part with some great Blender pieces looks great too. The design/lay-out is absolutely great. Also, even though I knew the book was going to be quite sized, the huge amount of information amazed me. I can’t really tell anything about the text, since I have yet to start reading it, which will be soon after I finished some (web-related) projects that currently eat up all of my time. I didn’t work with Blender for about three months now, but now that I received this book I have no doubt that I’m going to pick it up again and learn a lot of new stuff.
Oh, one thing I was less happy about: I don’t like books with a CD in it, since CD’s make it very hard to browse (thanks halfgaar) through it because the back won’t bend. Therefore I had to remove the CD from the cover-back, which was quite a though job. I had to use quite some power to be able to remove it, something I wasn’t happy too about because I didn’t want to damage the cover-back. Also, now the last page of the book sticks to the cover-back because of the lime that’s still a bit sticky.
Update: I took another look at the images. It’s a pity that they are so bright, but I think I can live with it. I won’t be buying a new one (even not at cost price) since a) I don’t need two of them, b) it will become quite an expensive book, c) I’ll have to miss the personal message in the new one. But as I said, I haven’t really read parts of the book yet, so I don’t know if some of the tutorials become useless because of the pictures. I also found a typo by the way, but I can’t remember which page…
Finally I got my copy. It arrived on Friday already. But I could not pick it up at the post office until this morning .
The layout is very well done. As already stated in this thread the pictures are a bit too bright, but this is negligible for my taste. I like the color section in the middle. Although I already know most of these pictures they are of a new quality when printed.
Many, many thanks to Ton, Stefano and everyone else involed.
I’m sick of waiting. Would be cool if the Manual arrives today. “And on the seventh day 4Daniël got the Blender 2.3 Manual” (No Cog, I’m not copying you) %|
I’m kind of an expert in print-quality and prepress issues. There are dozens of things that can either go wrong during a press run or that can be set up improperly by the artists. It all comes down to what the proofs looked like from the printer that our people at the BF signed off on. If they look good and the press run was bad, then the printer should reprint, free of charge. The press run should match the proof, period. If it was blown out on the proofs, then it is good that Ton is able to negotiate an at-cost rerun, as the printer could legally and ethically (in the US) stick him for a full-price rerun. If the proof was bad, but Ton was given assurances that it would print okay… well then that’s bad on both of them and the at-cost rerun is a fair solution for both parties.
I wish I knew what had really gone on, as I see things like this happen about once a week or so.
ho ok, i do you think trhey did more than one batch for the blender manual to print the 1400 books? mean is every book sent last week is going the be bright?
What do you think about the armatures tutorials on page 270 (approx). On page 269, figure 44, a wrong leg-rig is displayed. Can you make that out?[/quote]
What about almost every wireframe screenshot? Of the mist rendering on page 211 (there is a difference in the pictures, but I can’t make out the mist… Or the Clouds shader and coords shader on page 457? And there are plenty more examples :(, but the text is readable :).
PS. Wouldn’t it be an idea to put all of the image online, so the people who bought this book can at least see the pictures as they were meant…
