I've used Blurb for a couple of projects. I got some satisfactory results, but there are issues. Overall, I'd say my experience has been OK, but not great.
Blurb offers their "Bookwright" software as a free download for building the project, and they also have a web-based option. I have only used Bookwright, which is not very pleasant to use, especially if you are wanting much text in the book. Every time I paste in new text, Bookwright wants to change font size or font family. There is no way to build a set of favorites for Heading, Body, etc, so you have to constantly scroll up and down the (many) font families. In general Bookwright seems like beta-ware, but it does offer enough control to do about anything I wanted to do, although sometimes not without a fight.
I have also started a project using the Blurb Lightroom plug-in, but never finished it. While generally much nicer to use than Bookwright, in one important way, Lightroom was even worse for text than Bookwright - there was no way to link text boxes, so I could not flow text from a text box on one page to another. Not a problem if you are writing only a few short captions, but my project had a lot of text, so I had to switch back to Bookwright, and start over.
Lightroom is also less flexible about layouts. After you pick a Lightroom layout, say 4 photos per page, you can change the size of the photo boxes, move them around, delete one, etc. However, you can't do something in Lightroom that Bookwright allows, and that is: in Bookwright you can just draw a photo box, or a text box, wherever you want. You can also save any custom layouts you create as a template (I believe Lightroom does that, too.)
As for the finished project, I was satisfied, mostly. What I did - and I suggest you do this too - is to just get one copy as a proof, before putting in a bigger order. My first book had a lot of black and white photos, which came out too blue in the first printing. After a few emails, they agreed to reprint the book at no cost, and the second book looked good, as did my re-order for 10 copies. (I was not required to return the 'blue' book.)
My second project was built from scans from some poorly exposed Kodachromes. I did the best I could to retrieve the lost shadow detail in Lightroom/Photoshop, but several were still on the dark side. Bookwright has feature to turn on some kind of "photo optimizer" which seemed to brighten up the dark ones quite a bit. It also punched up the color, especially the reds, maybe a bit too much. Unfortunately, the optimizer is either off or on - it can not be selectively applied to individual photos. I printed one book with the filter off and one with it on, and for this project I believe the gain in shadow detail was worth the cost in really bright colors (hey, it was Kodachrome).
Blurb printing prices are somewhat expensive, but you get a price break at 10 copies, and a second price break at 20, if you want that many. Also, there is ALWAYS a coupon for 10-15-20, sometimes 25% off, so be sure to find one of those, either on the Blurb site or ...
So, I'm recommending Blurb with some reservations, but I've not used anything else to compare them to, so there may be better options. If you are a Lightroom user, and don't need big blocks of text, I'd suggest trying the Lightroom plug-in first.
---------- Post added 02-03-17 at 11:54 PM ----------
Originally posted by dflorez Appreciate it so far. I've been looking into blurb, but the internet seems to think the quality varies quite a bit book to book.
I've made books in the past for other people using adoramapix, (since their individual photo print quality seems similar to what I can print at home) but unfortunately I always just had their products shipped direct to customers/families (I know, that's awful), and haven't actually seen with my own eyes the quality.
Blurb will reprint at no cost if you have a problem, but it does add a week or two, so beware if you have a tight deadline.