Back to Real Life...
I was absent from social media and my Etsy/eBay operations this weekend for the most part because I spent four solid days working on a custom photo book for my Grandfather. One of the sites I've used to create custom photo books sent me an email on Tuesday advertising a coupon for 11X9 custom hardcover books with unlimited extra pages for $30. These places are usually running some sort of 40% off offer, but this was the first time I'd seen ANY of them offer me unlimited pages--that's where they get you, obviously.
Our Family Reunion was back in June, and my mom and her siblings planned for about two years for the event. It was also Grandpa's 80th birthday celebration, and it spanned four days. About a week before it started I get a text message from Mom that just says "Will you call me when have a minute?" Without any idea about what I could be expecting, I give her a call and find out that, while everyone agreed that a yearbook to catalog his life would be great, no one planned far enough in advance to have the idea brought to fruition in time for the reunion.
I have some experience building photo books, which is why I finally got brought into the conversation about it. My mom's family, bless them all, is notorious for doing things at the very last minute (more on that later), so I suggested that they scrap the idea of having something ready in time for the reunion & plan on building something afterwards that included the reunion/birthday photos. They all loved that idea, so we went with it, and I volunteered to put the thing together when the time came. In the mean time, I started keeping an eye on all those emails I get from the various photo book companies.
When the unlimited pages offer showed up, I jumped. The offer was only good for 7 days, 6 considering I didn't get the email notification about it until Tuesday; the coupon expired the following Monday (yesterday) at 11:59 p.m. PT. Still, I figured I could make it happen. How many pictures can there be?
The answer to that question is 360.
360 photos in total, and 107 pages.
I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised; the man is 80 years old, after all, and he's been photographed through them all (well, most of them). Honestly the only way I managed to pull it off is because my cousin had already done all of the editing work on the scanned photos that came from before the time of digital cameras for a slide-show presentation that actually did make it to the reunion. She'd even labeled them with the (again, mostly) appropriate years, which made my job of placing them (mostly) in chronological order possible. I did scrounge a few of the more recent photos from Facebook (the only thing it's good for, after all), but the most frustrating task was getting all the important dates.
Obviously I can give you my family members' birth dates, but I was pretty clueless about my cousins' (there's one, in August, that I know because it's the day before my little brother's) birthdays. Give me a break...there are 16 of us! Too many for anyone to remember, and Facebook seriously let me down in that area. Used to be that you could see anyone's birthday, as long as they'd provided it. Now I guess you can opt to not display that info, which is obnoxious to no one else but me, I'm sure.
Thankfully, I was able to get most of the relevant dates from my aunts, cousins and an uncle. Getting baby photos for all of my cousins was another challenge, with submissions showing up via email right up until 10 p.m. MT last night. The deadline I'd given everyone was 9 p.m., btw. As Mom said about her sister/my cousin, they wouldn't be them if they didn't show up at least an hour late. Good thing I've learned over 30 years to cope with their habits. In the end, everyone had a baby picture and the correct birth date, and we were able to include photos from the reunion weekend as well.
So, how good did we do with the coupon? Well, one, 107 page, 11X9 custom hardcover book at full price would have been $132. I got it for $30. In total before the coupon was applied, the price for 15 copies and shipping was going to be just under $2,000. With the discount it came to $502. That, my friends, is practically robbery. And I'm totally okay with it. They probably didn't think anyone would be able to truly take advantage of the unlimited extra pages thing. The coupon was only actively promoted on their site for two days. They seriously underestimated my ability to work well under pressure.
I can expect the completed books to arrive within 7 to 10 days. I'm sure at that point I'll discover some blaringly obvious flaw, but for the time being I am very, VERY happy with how it turned out. Also, I'm super thrilled that it's done. I can return to real life again!
Thanks for looking, Loves!
Always Yours,
The NWB
Our Family Reunion was back in June, and my mom and her siblings planned for about two years for the event. It was also Grandpa's 80th birthday celebration, and it spanned four days. About a week before it started I get a text message from Mom that just says "Will you call me when have a minute?" Without any idea about what I could be expecting, I give her a call and find out that, while everyone agreed that a yearbook to catalog his life would be great, no one planned far enough in advance to have the idea brought to fruition in time for the reunion.
I have some experience building photo books, which is why I finally got brought into the conversation about it. My mom's family, bless them all, is notorious for doing things at the very last minute (more on that later), so I suggested that they scrap the idea of having something ready in time for the reunion & plan on building something afterwards that included the reunion/birthday photos. They all loved that idea, so we went with it, and I volunteered to put the thing together when the time came. In the mean time, I started keeping an eye on all those emails I get from the various photo book companies.
When the unlimited pages offer showed up, I jumped. The offer was only good for 7 days, 6 considering I didn't get the email notification about it until Tuesday; the coupon expired the following Monday (yesterday) at 11:59 p.m. PT. Still, I figured I could make it happen. How many pictures can there be?
The answer to that question is 360.
360 photos in total, and 107 pages.
I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised; the man is 80 years old, after all, and he's been photographed through them all (well, most of them). Honestly the only way I managed to pull it off is because my cousin had already done all of the editing work on the scanned photos that came from before the time of digital cameras for a slide-show presentation that actually did make it to the reunion. She'd even labeled them with the (again, mostly) appropriate years, which made my job of placing them (mostly) in chronological order possible. I did scrounge a few of the more recent photos from Facebook (the only thing it's good for, after all), but the most frustrating task was getting all the important dates.
Obviously I can give you my family members' birth dates, but I was pretty clueless about my cousins' (there's one, in August, that I know because it's the day before my little brother's) birthdays. Give me a break...there are 16 of us! Too many for anyone to remember, and Facebook seriously let me down in that area. Used to be that you could see anyone's birthday, as long as they'd provided it. Now I guess you can opt to not display that info, which is obnoxious to no one else but me, I'm sure.
Thankfully, I was able to get most of the relevant dates from my aunts, cousins and an uncle. Getting baby photos for all of my cousins was another challenge, with submissions showing up via email right up until 10 p.m. MT last night. The deadline I'd given everyone was 9 p.m., btw. As Mom said about her sister/my cousin, they wouldn't be them if they didn't show up at least an hour late. Good thing I've learned over 30 years to cope with their habits. In the end, everyone had a baby picture and the correct birth date, and we were able to include photos from the reunion weekend as well.
So, how good did we do with the coupon? Well, one, 107 page, 11X9 custom hardcover book at full price would have been $132. I got it for $30. In total before the coupon was applied, the price for 15 copies and shipping was going to be just under $2,000. With the discount it came to $502. That, my friends, is practically robbery. And I'm totally okay with it. They probably didn't think anyone would be able to truly take advantage of the unlimited extra pages thing. The coupon was only actively promoted on their site for two days. They seriously underestimated my ability to work well under pressure.
I can expect the completed books to arrive within 7 to 10 days. I'm sure at that point I'll discover some blaringly obvious flaw, but for the time being I am very, VERY happy with how it turned out. Also, I'm super thrilled that it's done. I can return to real life again!
Thanks for looking, Loves!
Always Yours,
The NWB
Comments
Post a Comment