Blurb is an American self-publishing platform that allowing users to create, self-publish, promote, share, and sell their own print and ebooks. It also offers digital software for layouting books.
History
The company was founded in 2005 by Eileen Gittins and funded by Canaan Partners and Anthem Venture Partners. Blurb's headquarters are in San Francisco, California. Since its inception, Blurb has delivered more than 14 million books created by more than a half million customers. Blurb’s website is translated into 6 languages and the company ships to more than 70 countries and territories. Time Magazine named Blurb one of 2006's "50 Coolest Web Sites". The company has taken in $21.6 million in venture capital funding, and generates nearly $100 million in revenues per year. Blurb announced a partnership with Amazon in April 2014. The deal allows Blurb-designed books to be sold and distributed on the Amazon platform. The partnership enables self publishing on the platform with a 15% cut on Blurb books—a discount from previous fees of up to 45%. Amazon has agreed to the fee to access to Blurb’s nearly two-million authors, who have produced 8 million books since 2006. In May 2014 Blurb acquired MagCloud, a self-publishing platform for magazines, under a licensing agreement from HP. In the deal, Blurb has taken over the company’s technology and operations, and nearly 10,000 customers. Blurb will offer warehousing and fulfillment services to customers, acting as a one-stop-shop for boutique and niche publishing.
Services
Blurb’s book-making tools include BookWright, Bookify, and Blurb’s plug-in for Adobe InDesign which allows book makers to design and upload their book’s PDF files from within InDesign itself. Adobe’s Lightroom 4 & 5 has a built-in Book module that Lightroom users can use to create and upload their books directly to Blurb for printing or for creation in ebook form. Blurb authors can promote and share their books using Blurb’s free on-line marketing tools. They can also set their price and sell their books and ebooks in Blurb’s online bookstore. Authors retain 100% of their markup with printed books and 80% of their selling cost with ebooks. Blurb’s print-on-demand technology enables authors to print just as many books are ordered. Blurb offers seven book sizes, hardcover and softcover options, and a range of premium and professional-grade papers and end sheets. Blurb e-books are fixed format, enabling them to retain the same image and text placement when viewed on the Apple iPad as in the printed book version.
Software
Blurb allows its customers to use different software to make their own book.
