Almost heaven
I'm not an author, but I bought a couple things from The Book Patch recently, and I'm quite pleased with my experience! The good outweighs the bad, and ultimately wins the day, but there were a few negatives I'd be remiss to ignore. Minor issues include: 1.) You need to sign up for a user account, with all of its author features, even if you don't need those features, and even when using guest checkout. 2.) Should you contact support, before hearing from a real person you'll receive a flurry of automated emails. Some of the info is useful, like the production schedule estimating when your items will be printed and shipped (though I'd have loved to see this somewhere on the website, before placing my order), but other things are contradictory and confusing, namely when tracking info is sent out. In one place they suggest noon, elsewhere 8PM, then another email says 7PM. I think it might be prudent to correct that contradiction, consolidate the various emails, and maybe make it clear that what you're reading is just an automated form response that will eventually be supplemented with contact from a human being. As it stands the emails could conceivably be misinterpreted as dismissive or outright rude. As much as I'd like to see that small stuff improved, what actually lowered my rating was a set of more substantial issues: 3.) The holidays understandably have an impact on shipping times, but I wasn't prepared for how much. My order was placed just after the Thanksgiving weekend, and I expected the turnaround time to be at the upper end of the estimated 3-5 business days. Instead it was 9. On demand, small run printing of custom books is a tricky business, I'm sure, and I don't mind waiting a bit, but it became an issue because... 4.) The only shipping option that was reasonably priced was Media Mail. Its modern implementation is nowhere near as slow as its old reputation might have you believe, but it's still a relative snail's pace. In my case the shipment had to go through a region of the US that had recently been hit by severe inclement weather, slowing things even further. The Book Patch does not control the weather, nor the USPS, but the potential for things like that makes it desirable to get packages out the door with a quickness. Nine days was a bit too long here, pushing the shipment into dealing with weather it would have breezed by only a couple of days prior. 5.) When the package finally arrived, a few days before Christmas, I discovered that one book I'd ordered had printing errors, the other was missing altogether, and a book I'd never heard of and didn't purchase had been included. I was able to contact a very pleasant, helpful customer service rep who corrected these issues and got me what I paid for at no additional cost, but it was early February before I had my hands on both books in proper condition. Thankfully the order wasn't a gift, though I was disappointed I didn't get to curl up with these books during the holiday. After all of that, I still think highly of The Book Patch on the grounds of their response to my issues and the quality of their product: 1.) A simple set of photos depicting the printing errors was all they needed to approve a reprint of the misprinted book. No jumping through hoops. 2.) Through our various back and forths discussing my problems, the representative I spoke with was delightfully pleasant, polite, and genuinely interested in helping me get what I needed. A thankless job during the slowest periods, and no doubt an order of magnitude worse when dealing with the stress of the end of year holiday crush. Also the stress of a global virus pandemic that I imagine had no small part in slowing down absolutely every part of the process (yet another reason I'm not too upset by the delays). 3.) The end result is a pair of books that are of genuinely stunning quality, and seeing them in person I understand why their author has publicly opined that none of the alternative printers they tried could come anywhere near matching The Book Patch. Crisp text, accurate color reproduction, everything neatly aligned, quite shockingly good output considering it's not coming from a major publisher. The phenomenal quality of their product and the exceptional customer service add up to a predominantly positive experience. The old truism of "good, fast, or cheap, pick any two" holds up, and the delays don't bother me too much since I paid a reasonable price for high quality prints of books that are several hundred pages of full color, image-heavy content. If The Book Patch were to streamline their automated emails, offer more realistic estimates of holiday shipping times, and perhaps anticipate printing issues with books like these (i.e. ink-heavy, rich color content), I could see future experiences easily deserving 5 stars.