[Wags]

Well that is strange on the pricing - I just ordered a 8.5x8.5 hardcover on Friday evening and didn't notice anything different for the 12x12.

And yes if the error is yours they aren't responsible for it, but I have found that if the error is their's they are very quick to correct it. That's why the book making process won't go through until you click on the preview - that way they have proof you saw the book before hand and at least had the opportunity to proof it before it went to press.

[Christian]

Hi Dannie,

Word got around about your post, and I thought I'd give you a little background on the pricing display.

In the beginning, there was $4.99 and $.25/page for all of our photo books and it was good. Next came photo silk paper as a simple 15% option, and people did printith their books in silk and matte, and it was good. Next came the $10 hardcover option and all was still straight forward and good. However, soon we moved into sizes that were only available in the hardcover or in softcover at a scaled down size. Toss in a few mini books, and you can see how selection promotes complexity.

The 12x12 is our most flexible (complex) product allowing people to order it in 8 different sizes and bindings. So, the one common demoninator for all books is $4.99 base price, and some have a +$10 option for a hard cover. If we were to offer different styles of 12x12 bindings for a different price, that price would be different from the material binding.

All that said, I will agree our display is pretty darn crappy and we hope to get it all improved once our latest software updates ship out. A simple list of sizes and final prices is what we will show when we get it improved.

Also, full wrap covers on books wider than 9" is tough becuase the machinery itself does not support wrapping 28" (1"+12"+2"+12"+1") of paper around a book casing.

Hope this helps, and let us know how your book turns out.

[knudl]

Christian, on Aug 6 2008, 04:57 PM, said:

Hi Dannie,

Word got around about your post, and I thought I'd give you a little background on the pricing display.

In the beginning, there was $4.99 and $.25/page for all of our photo books and it was good. Next came photo silk paper as a simple 15% option, and people did printith their books in silk and matte, and it was good. Next came the $10 hardcover option and all was still straight forward and good. However, soon we moved into sizes that were only available in the hardcover or in softcover at a scaled down size. Toss in a few mini books, and you can see how selection promotes complexity.

The 12x12 is our most flexible (complex) product allowing people to order it in 8 different sizes and bindings. So, the one common demoninator for all books is $4.99 base price, and some have a +$10 option for a hard cover. If we were to offer different styles of 12x12 bindings for a different price, that price would be different from the material binding.

All that said, I will agree our display is pretty darn crappy and we hope to get it all improved once our latest software updates ship out. A simple list of sizes and final prices is what we will show when we get it improved.

Also, full wrap covers on books wider than 9" is tough becuase the machinery itself does not support wrapping 28" (1"+12"+2"+12"+1") of paper around a book casing.

Hope this helps, and let us know how your book turns out.

K, does anyone else think it's a little weird that Viovio found out about this thread and responded within 24 hrs of someone making a complaint about their confusing pricing structure? I personally love Viovio, and use them all the time, but this seems a little strange to me

[Christian]

Hey Knudl,

Hope I didn't creep you out! Typically customers (as in this case) let us know when they see threads about us when there is something we can help add to the discussion. We do our best to be helpful without being annoying.

[Wags]

knudl, on Aug 6 2008, 02:54 PM, said:

K, does anyone else think it's a little weird that Viovio found out about this thread and responded within 24 hrs of someone making a complaint about their confusing pricing structure? I personally love Viovio, and use them all the time, but this seems a little strange to me

I confess, I got to thinking about the question at hand and sent an email to Viovio last night asking about it.

[knudl]

Good thinking Wags! I never would have thought to forward them the thread!

[jonjonsmom]

Thanks for all this great info. Seems like I'll probably use Viovio for my books now

[Zaz]

knudl, on Aug 6 2008, 04:54 PM, said:

K, does anyone else think it's a little weird that Viovio found out about this thread and responded within 24 hrs of someone making a complaint about their confusing pricing structure? I personally love Viovio, and use them all the time, but this seems a little strange to me

Actually, I thought that was great. I'd like to see more of that kind of behavior from other companies. I think it's awesome that whenever anyone has a problem with Carbonite, for example, Len is here in a jiffy to let us know what is going on.

I'll be trying out viovio, too.

[TheresaK]

I'm planning on using VioVio for my son's babybook. I have some pages that have edging detail that I want to preserve. Does anyone have any experience with this?

What I've been doing is puting my LO's on a simple but coordinating background. I'm hoping that this gets wholly are mostly cut off in the trim process. The section on their cropping specifics says that square books are cropped 1/4" on each side. But the upload size for a 10xx10 is 10.25x10.25. That only leaves 1/8" on each side for cropping. I'm wondering if they enlarge the image before cropping. I sent an email to them, but the response said that 1/8" was cropped from all sides. I'm confused as to what to trust and how to do those pages that I want to keep the edging on.

So if anyone has ever done this successfully, please share! Or Christian, if you're still around, maybe you can clarify. I'll try another e-mail to their website, maybe, as well.

[Uncle Dannie]

OK, got my book back, and overall, am pretty happy with it. My fault, as Viovio warned me, about the full cover. Since I didn't understand exactly what they meant about a center cut-out being the default for 12X12, I had left a 12X24 layout for the cover jacket. Since they don't do jacket covers in 12x12 sizes, Viovio took the right half and used it as the image behind the cutout, and the left half was put as the last page in the book. The full cover was suppose to be a panorama photo of the Taft Union High School, so I was left with the left half of the school all by itself on the last page. If I reorder any books (and I plan to reorder at least one more) I'll correct my mistakes to compensate for my misunderstanding. I'll put the panorama at the front of the book, and use another photo for the cut-out.

[gsreed]

I first heard about Viovio here at ScrapGirls and since I was doing an 11x8.5 family history book, checked out the site. For the price alone it had Shutterfly beat by a mile, so I decided to use it. I found the uploading of jpg files to be very slow unless I took them to school and used the super fast internet there. When the upload was complete, the page on Viovio did not always refresh automatically and I wasn't always sure all the info had made it there before manually refreshing. Anyway, I finally got all the files - 65 pages - uploaded and arranged. I ordered one copy as a 'demo'. I got an email from customer service telling me that the back of the title page was always blank and they added a matching blank page for me. I got the book within a week and thought it was wonderful. I was thrilled with the quality and oversight to make sure the book printed correctly.

At the family reunion 20 people wanted copies, so I proofed the demo, uploaded the corrected pages, deleted the 'extra' blank page and added my own and previewed the 'new' book (about a dozen times!), and ordered them all ($700+!). I got no email notice so I supposed all was fine.....imagine my horror when the books came yesterday and all my beautifully designed page spreads were off by one! I felt sick, I cried, I emailed customer service. They haven't told me it's my fault and I'm stuck with these books, but they haven't offered a compromise solution yet either. We're still in the 'I'm not sure what we can do, but I'll go to a manager' stage. I hope with all my heart that they make an offer that I can live with...I don't expect a free reprint or reprints and keeping the others, but I am hoping for something.

Lesson learned.....I don't know, I thought I had their system figured out, I checked over the preview a bazillion times, but it still came back wrong. Maybe the best solution is caution, order one before ordering a bunch. At some other book sites (Shutterfly, who is, admittedly much more expensive) the preview is laid out like a book and you 'turn' the pages seeing exactly the layout. Not so at Viovio b/c you don't get to see that cover and you don't know if that first blank page(back of cover) is on the left or right side.

I'll let you know how this turns out.

[gsreed]

Well, I've heard from Viovio customer service and we've agreed to a compromise for this problem. I'm happy with their offer-it was generous and fair...they say it is 'unprecedented'. They did recommend that if you want someone to look it over before printing that you add a note in the 'Special Instructions' box on the order page. I'll do that for future orders. I searched this messageboard and the internet for alternative book making services and Viovio comes up again and again as the best value for the money. Their books really are nicely done.....paper, colors, printing quality, covers, binding are all great. Just be very sure that your pages are all in order and you ask them to proof it before printing.

[cyndisa]

Thanks for the info and update, gsreed! I've been watching this thread, because I am thinking of using Viovio, and it helps to hear what has happened for other people. I appreciate you taking the time to post your experience!

[naninca]

Thanks to this thread, I ordered about 32 pages from Viovio, and just received them last week.
I've been printing 12 x 12 pages at Costco for $2.99 each, and didn't want to spend that much on these.
The pages were ordered UNBOUND, so I could slip them into page protectors in my regular albums.
They came fairly quickly, the price was GREAT (75 cents per page!), and looked good. I did have to get used to the paper quality (I'm used to photo paper for my other pages), but overall I'm quite happy.
I'll use them again, as soon as I do enough pages to hit the minimum again. (Aw shucks, I have to SCRAP some more?!)

Thanks for all your input,
Nancy

[justgail]

I adore Viovio.com. I have printed a couple of books from them and am very impressed with the price, quality and turnaround time. I have done the 8/12 by 11 softcover books. I did a book of my daughters life from birth to age 18 (I think it was around 65 pages?) and was able to order one for her, me, grandma and godmother since they were only $19.99 each. We also did a family cookbook that was more expensive because if was about 110 pages. My daughter did one of her vacation to North Carolina and gave a copy to each family that went. I am currently working on one of my twins field trip to give to their teachers for a christmas gift. One word of advice, for "full color bleed" make your pages 8.75 x 11.25 and don't put anything too close to the edges. This will give you full color pages that are amazing!

[gophergirl]

Thanks Zaz. I was wondering about them too. For the record, if you are doing large numbers of a book, you may want to contact whatever vendor and ask for a special discount. I personally have only used Shutterfly and Snapfish, but I am always looking for new sources.

BTW: Love the Bob icon! "Just remember if it doesn't have a tail it's not a monkey. Even if it has a monkey kind of shape."
"If you like to talk to tomatoes..."

[dawn51]

I am confused on how to upload pages to do a book. Can someone walk me through it? I am making them with cs3. I am going to make sure I have my guidelines set at 1/2" all the way around so nothing gets cut off.

Thank You,
dawn

[Wags]

dawn51, on Jan 11 2009, 07:44 AM, said:

I am confused on how to upload pages to do a book. Can someone walk me through it? I am making them with cs3. I am going to make sure I have my guidelines set at 1/2" all the way around so nothing gets cut off.

Thank You,
dawn

I think you can do a batch conversion with CS3 - convert to jpeg and rename files to page numbers in the order you want them to appear in the book. That way they will automatically fall into place when you upload.

If the book is 40 pages or less you can usually put them in a zip file and upload at once. If it is larger than that you will probably want to use the FTP upload option.

Once you log into the site, go to PHOTOS then click on CREATE GALLERY. If you do not want you pictures to be seen be sure and change the security setting at the bottom of the page to PRIVATE. Once you have created a gallery for your book, you will be able to add images to it. Whatever image/page you pic as your favorite will automatically become the cover image. (FYI - You ad a zip file the same way you would individual pages.) The green arrow is for "uploading" images/pages.

Once you have your book uploaded, check all the pages, make sure everything is in the order you want it to appear and then click on the order book logo. It opens up a wizard that will walk you through the book creation and order process.

Customer service is very responsive, so if you get stuck just email them!

Oh yeah - additional helpful hints can be found here: http://www.viovio.com/wiki/Step+by+Step+Sc...ok+Instructions

[mmimmi]

Does viovio.com print individual pages? I went and looked around and it's kinda confusing, with the travel part and I can only see photo books. how about www.scrapbooksplease.com? they have decent prices and different quality paper. they also send you a sample of each different quality paper so you can decide which one you want to use. Has anyone used them? Should I start my own thread? lol

[Wags]

mmimmi, on Jan 22 2009, 08:18 AM, said:

Does viovio.com print individual pages? I went and looked around and it's kinda confusing, with the travel part and I can only see photo books. how about www.scrapbooksplease.com? they have decent prices and different quality paper. they also send you a sample of each different quality paper so you can decide which one you want to use. Has anyone used them? Should I start my own thread? lol

Viovio does what they call "unbound books" where the pages are printed the same as they would be for the books, but are left unbound. It works out to about .80 a page for 12x12's. There is a minimum page order - which I think is 24.

[gsreed]

Hi, mmimmi & others. Yes, getting to the unbound page option can be confusing at Viovio. Basically you proceed as if making a book (12 x 12), then at the ordering page you designate single pages. I have learned to navigate their system and been in contact with Customer Service many times suggesting they streamline the page option process to make it more user friendly - read that as more like Shutterfly ). The quality of the pages is good, order to shipping time is about 7 days. The Customer Service dept. (Grace) is great - timely, friendly, helpful. If you want multiple copies of the same layout, you have to upload it again, ie if you want 3 copies of a layout, upload it 3 times & it will show up in your gallery as 3 separate pages. There's no quick & easy drop down menu of numbers to just order multiples.

Viovio's primary focus is bound books and they do a very nice job with those. If you use that, one caveat I learned, is ALWAYS use the Special Instructions box to request that someone there checks over the layout order before printing and notify you that it is OK. I agree that the Travel section sort of muddies up the site, but I just ignore everything except my galleries and the ordering process.

Hope this helps.

[naninca]

I agree that the site is hard to navigate. They changed it since the first time I used it.
I spent about 6 hours ordering last time. It's hard to understand, and the uploads take FOREVER! (With no little icon to tell you it's uploading.)
If you order a second book (or group of loose pages), make SURE you start with a new gallery. Otherwise, your old and new photos will be mixed together, and you'll have to start over to order.
Customer service was helpful, and I'm afraid my generally kind tone didn't come through in some of my emails - as my frustration built.

I'll use them again due to the quality and price, but until that website gets easier to navigate, I'm not thrilled about it!

Nancy