Flickr has introduced a new product that further marries the digital and analog world of photography. With Flickr Photo Books, this premium offering allows users to create their own keepsake of memories and tell their own story. The company considers the timing of the announcement notable because Flickr users can create their own book just in time for the holidays.
Once ordered, books should arrive between 5 to 7 business days.
There’s a bit of a catch though: Flickr Photo Books is only available to those in the Continental US.
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For the most part, Flickr Photo Books is pretty much what it sounds like. Users go to the product editor and choose a set that they want to use photos from. Then, each photo can be cropped, zoomed, and positioned to help properly tell the story. Each book has a maximum of 240 pages and will be delivered as a 11″ x 8.5″ glossy hardcover.
The cost? $34.95 for a book with up to 20 pages. Any additional page costs $0.50.
In May, Flickr unveiled a major redesign that gave all of its users 1 TB of free storage space. The move wasn’t necessarily to encourage them to share more photos, but rather to upload larger file sized images. The photo-sharing service supports full resolution images, which, if high enough, would make it great for printing purposes.
Some users may also think that Flickr Photo Books is reminiscent of Blurb’s integration years ago. The “create your own book” service allowed Flickr users to import any of their photos and could have any type of book created — it seems Yahoo now wants it all to be done in-house.
This development is a welcome sign of Yahoo’s continued interest in keep Flickr appealing to its users. It is facing challenges from other photo services including the likes of Facebook, 500px, and Google, which also supports full-size resolution images and recently launched a slew of new tools for photographers.
Of course, this isn’t Flickr’s first foray into printed materials. The service offers users the ability to take their photos and turn them into posters, photo cards, prints, calendars, collage gifts, gallery wrapped canvases, and more. It even currently offers the ability to create your own coffee table book, thanks to its integration with Snapfish — it’s potentially cheaper than Flickr Photo Books, starting at $4.99 and varying depending on the specific book dimensions and country.
Interestingly, as The Verge notes, this new product was built with technology from GhostBird Software, IQ Engine, and LookFlow, all recent Yahoo acquisitions.
Update: We heard from Yahoo that contrary to earlier reports, no acquisition technology was used to build this product. The post has been updated accordingly.
Photo credit: Flickr
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