Qoop: An alternative to iPhoto books

One of the things I actually really like about .Mac* are those snazzy iPhoto books. They make fantastic gifts (people go nuts when they get these) and keepsakes. Until now, I haven't known of another service that made producing photo books so easy.

Qoop uses photos stored in your Flickr account to produce books that are very similar. Choose from two types: A "photo book" or a "thumbnail book." The photo books have a soft cover (no hard covers are available) made of a glossy laminated heavy weight paper, and the pages are a matte finished paper stock. They can be up to 800 pages in length and hold up to 4800 images with titles and descriptions (you can specify the number of photos per page). These start at $15.99US for a 28 page book with 168 images (compare to $19.99 for 20 pages of Apple's large soft cover book). Plus, you get a title on the spine.

The thumbnail book features 20 images per page arranged 5 rows high by 4 columns across. These start at $24.79US for the first 1000 images. You can also get a 13.5" x 19"poster (that's very similar to Mike Matas' life poster) for $9.99US. It's a really nice service and a great alternative for people who don't subscribe to .Mac. Check it out.

*Update: Seems you don't need to subscribe to .Mac to order an iPhoto book. I regret the error. Also, reader djones points out Shutterfly as publishing hard cover books, much like the Apple books: http://www.shutterfly.com/.  Thanks, djones!