Book Module Issues

I recently had a serious problem in a book we created in the Book Module and sent to Blurb. We selected a  background color  in LR and viewed it in the pdf we sent to Blurb and was satisfied with the result.  Unfortunatly what we received from Blurb was a book with a background color significantly darker than what we saw on our screen or the pdf in the Blurb preview.  Since then we have learned a lot and wanted to share our expeience.

1. Blurb acknowledged that the color of the background and what we had printed where significantly different from what we had seen on our screen and the pdf generated.  In fact the background color was so dark that you could almost not read the printed text. That was because Blurb said the background color we selected was out of the color gamut that they could print.  Instead of notifying you of this problem they just go ahead and print it anyway and you then need to live with the results.

2. We have tried to work with Blurb in resolving this issue and they have been most accomidating but that is not the issue as I see it.  Let me tell you some of the things they have suggested to prevent this issue from coming up again.

a. Print a book and then make corrections if needed!  Considering this is a book costing $150 to print that makes very little economic sense as the second book may not be acceptable as well.

b. Soft proof the book!  Well you cannot soft proof the book in LR you can only soft proof photos in the Develop module.  So they suggested to soft proof in Photoshop but as I understand it you can only soft proof a photo not the entire boook and my issue was the background color.

c. It was then suggested we soft proof it in their book making program BookWright so we created a jpeg and imported into BookWright and soft proofed it their.  We found that acceptable and ordered a new book which came in today.  

d. We then contacted Blurb and said the book proof we had received was acceptable with the correct background color and they then told me that the book cover which has the same color as the interior of the book is out of the printer color gamut and could not guarentee that the next printing would be the same background color.  Considering we had applied the same global color to all pages and cover this made no sense.  We then went into the Book Module and checked the color for both the interior pages background and the cover and they all were exactly the same.

e. Blurb has offered to print the book again with a different color background but I have no idea how to get a color that can then be printed.  This is all a guessing game of millions of colors and I know I have a high probability of  being wrong!

What I am asking is can anyone offer me an suggestions as to how to deal with this issue? 

Can anyone tell me why Adobe does not let you soft proof a book in the Book Module but you can soft proof a photo in the Develop Module?

I am almost at the point where we will make our book outside of LR in a program provided by the printer so we can then soft proof our book with that printers profile.  

I am first and formost a photographer and had used the Book Module to create books in a easy manner since I could go between the different modules and make adjustment easily.  Regretabley the entire book making process within LR is so limited and frustrating when it comes to accuracy of colors that we cannot see using it in the future.

Herman Jakubowski