Blurb changes finished pages by itself!

There seems to be an easy and effective work-around to the Blurb uploading issue described in my post above. The Blurb Help Desk referred me to the "Blurb PDF Uploader" here http://www.blurb.com/pdf_uploader_frontend/index.html#/chooseFiles.

After yet another failed attempt to upload a 110-page book to Blurb using Lightroom, I followed Blurb's urgings to use this work-around. Instead of uploading directly to Blurb, I made two pdf's of my book (cover and book proper) with Lightroom 8.1 and uploaded them using Blurb's web-based PDF Uploader. Easy, intuitive and INCREDIBLY FAST- much faster than I have ever experienced with any version of Lightroom. A 110 page book that I have been trying to upload with Lightroom for over two weeks uploaded first try in 15 minutes! The ready-to-publish book appears in my Blurb Dashboard as before, complete with cover- the only difference is that the Dashboard indicates uploaded by pdf whereas in the past it said uploaded by Lightroom. (Nice developing work, Blurb!)

I had never seen the Blurb PDF Uploader before and don't know if it's new or if it has been around a while. I won't see my finished book for a while, but the process was so fast and easy I may well be a convert, using Lightroom just to make pdf's of books.

What is troubling about all this has been the waste of time trying futilely to complete uploads. The upload process from Lightroom is for some clearly broken. Blurb seems to have developed an alternative that can upload a book better than Lightroom ever did. But where are the timely bug notices to users? A Blurb Help Page seems to indicate that something was known to be amiss two days after the arrival of LR 8.1 . Is the upload via Lightroom dead or dying and soon to disappear? Is a long-standing work-flow no longer viable for some or all? Or is the upload issue limited to a few unlucky customers? A little more transparency would be welcome.

I'm waiting to see what my book uploaded via the Blurb PDF Uploader looks like. So far so good.

I am having major problems uploading Lightroom-produced books to Blurb. I don’t know if the problem is unique to my system or more widespread. The previous post by Senzanomine seems to indicate I may not be alone.

I have created quite a few Lightroom/Blurb books in the past with minimal problems.  That happy situation came to an end with LR 8.0 and its problems in the book module. I am now using LR 8.1 but now I can't upload properly to Blurb.  I can now create books with no problem and publish them in pdf format with Lightroom, but I cannot upload my current 112 page book to Blurb- the upload "stalls" or "hangs" when the upload bar is at about the 80% complete point. About a dozen attempts over a two-week period have produced the same result- the upload hanging at the same 80% point. When I click on the stalled bar, I get a message reading "waiting for Blurb server processing."

Significantly, I AM able to upload the book in thirty ot forty page segments, apparently indicating that there is nothing in the individual photos or texts preventing a succesful upload and the file is not corrupted. As a control, I uploaded the LR-produced pdf of the entire book to Dropbox in about 15 minutes with no problem.

As another test, I tried uploading to Blurb copies of books I had succesfully uploaded and published in the past. One stalled at the 80% point, one uploaded succesfully but slowly and with many error messages before completion.

On December 14 the Blurb Help Center published a note entitled "Lightroom Upload Problems."  (Interestingly, Lightroom 8.1 became available on or about December 12.) I followed the Help Desk suggestions with no resolution of my problem.  I reached (on chat) a very courteous agent at the Blurb help desk on December 26 who said she was unaware of any upload issues with Lightroom.  I have no idea whether or not I am the only LR/Blurb customer with this crippling upload issue, but the timing of the December 14 Blurb note may indicate I am not alone.

Techical data: I am running Mojave on my Mac desktop. I began the book in question in LR 8.0, was forced to revert to LR 7.3 when the book module in 8.0 misbehaved, then upgraded to LR 8.1 when it became available. My internet connection is not great but adequate as can be seen from the easy upload to Dropbox.

Auch ich habe Probleme mit dem Upload von Foto-Büchern aus Lightroom CC (Vers. 8.1, Creative Cloud, alles neueste Versionen) nach Blurb. Der Upload dauert jeweils sehr lange bzw. bricht nach über einer Stunde (bei ca. 80% im Fortschrittsbalken) ab. Bisher bei drei verschiedenen Büchern mehr als 10 Versuche. Alles frustran und maximal nervend. Einzige Lösungsmöglichkeit (vom Blurb-Support vorgeschlagen): Export aus LR über das Buch-Modul als pdf-Datei und anschließend Upload über die Blurb-Homepage als pdf.

Wo liegt der Fehler

I had the same problem and it was related to 'copy layout'. I had to remove pages created via 'copy layout' and replace them with standard layout pages and after that modify those pages.

I also am having the same problem.  I redid everything using the “create custom layout” option but blurb continues to replace photos that I have already inserted with others and repeat pages.  Help!  I have lost a lot of time creating this book.

I had a similar problem. Only in my case, it repeated one page 3x, another page 2x and another different page 3x. In the process of repeating, it eliminated some pages that I'd already created. I attempted to go back to a previous backup but the error was saved after a 15 hour work session on the book, so I either lose 15 hours or try to clean up the mess & recreate the missing pages.

A speculation. I used "copy layout" instead of saving a layout as a "custom layout" first. I'm wondering if those were the pages that got duplicated? Images still had a 1 above them as if they were used in the book, but I can't find them anywhere, so I think the system thinks they are on the duplicated pages. When I tried to delete the duplicated pages, it deletes them all at once (the 3 that are the same), not one at a time. After I do this, I think it releases the "1" symbol above the photos & I can now tell which photos are not used.

I've now deleted the duplicate pages and I'm starting over. I really want to know if this sort of error has corrupted the entire book. Should I start over? This is a large book, 160 pages, 600 photos. I can't afford for this to happen once I get further along.

Today when I opened the file for the first time, the deleted photos are gone, but some of my formatting has been obviously changed. Some photos that were formatted to bleed to edge are no longer that way. So I'm wondering what less obvious formatting changes have been made. Please help quickly. I'm sort of stuck now & Invested so much time in this Blurb book process & don't have another way to get this done in time.

My computer is fast enough. Dell Precision Tower 3420, 16mb ram, Nvidia 1080 graphics card.

Thank you.

Hi,

We've identified an issue and working on a fix.

In the meantime, we need additional information to verify it's the same issue.

What are the steps to reproduce the issue?

Also,
Is it possible for you to share the catalog?
That will help us understand the issue better. You can upload the .lrcat file and share the link to catalog through a message to me separately.

Thanks,

Bhargav

Another user with Book Module problems!

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Lightroom Classic 8.0: Book Module bug | Photoshop Family Customer Community