Monday, November 9, 2015
Product Review | BooksTo.Me
Remember the days when we shot photos with film, went down to a local drugstore to get them developed and then put them in albums for all to see? For the majority of us, those days are gone. Our photos live online and that's about it. There is a way to get your Instagram photos in hardcover books and receive them automatically on a monthly or quarterly basis...with BooksTo.Me. BooksTo.Me is a family-run business based in Colorado and they very generously offered me a two-month subscription to try out their service.
Sign up and choose your plan - monthly ($24) or once every three months ($44). That's it. BooksTo.Me does the rest. All of your Instagram images are then compiled into an 8" x 8" hardbound book and shipped to your door free of charge (currently shipping to USA only). It comes with a front cover jacket displaying the dates and some of your most-liked images.
What if you don't want ALL of your Instagram images in an upcoming book? That's easy too - just hashtag #noBTM and they will be excluded.
Quality
The books are printed on Neenah Classic Crest Smooth Digital 100# paper which is Carbon Neutral Plus and Green-e certified. The weight of the paper is suitable for this type of book and colors look true to the original images.
Since there is no limit to the number of images in your book, some images will be resized smaller so they can all fit in a standard volume.
Pros:
It's EASY and automatic. Most of us are busy and don't have time to select and layout images.
The quality is excellent. I've had photo books printed from other services and this paper is far superior to others I've ordered. The jacket is a nice addition to the book and clearly displays the date which is also printed on the first page of the book.
BooksTo.Me is a great way to build up a library of favorite images from your Instagram gallery (remember you can hashtag #noBTM to exclude images).
It's FAST! Your book arrives within 7-10 days of your subscription date. It is shipped securely in a cardboard mailer for extra protection.
-resized.jpg "© BooksTo.Me")
Cons:
I made the mistake of adding the #noBTM hashtag from Instagram online! Through the Instagram app, after you add the same hashtag to a number of images, you get blocked for a while (Instagram thinks you're a spammer). So, I thought I would be clever and add the hashtags online. Apparently they didn't "stick" and so my first volume included a lot of images that I didn't want. This is NOT BooksTo.Me's fault - but my advice would be to double-check to make sure the images you want to exclude are properly tagged!
When I received my second book I noticed that the dates overlapped - The first was January 26-February 25 and the second was February 23-March 25. Sure enough this meant I had some images that were in both books - a total of 12. If I were a paid subscriber, I'm sure BooksTo.Me would replace this book for me since it wasn't due to any error of mine, but apparently something went wrong on their end and that needs addressing.
Since it's all automatic, you don't have any input on the layout or size of the images. I'm kind of particular and I would prefer to design my own book so I could group certain images together and choose which are displayed at a larger size.
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