PastBook launches Elite: on-demand, professionally designed photo books

Get a gorgeous Photo Book, without having to spend hours creating it. Elite Designers do that for you.

Today PastBook opens the public beta of its app-less Elite service, aka "Uber for Photo Books".

PastBook Elite allows anyone to get a beautifully designed photo book with no effort or app required. Users can simply send their photos in the way they prefer (i.e. email, sms, Wetransfer®, Dropbox, Facebook, etc), and a professional designer will create a tailor-made photo book for them.

The user receives a preview of the book and if he/she likes it - it gets printed as a high-quality hardcover 12x8.5" (30x21cm) photo book. Totally hassle-free. Available worldwide.

Today PastBook Elite (https://www.pastbook.com/elite/) opens its public beta - worldwide -to let people get gorgeous photo books without having to spend hours on creating it.

The process is very straightforward, it is absolutely grandma-proof and doesn't require any app:

1. Simply send or share your pictures the way you want to the Elite Designer who will be assigned to your project (you can use email, sms, Wetransfer®, Dropbox, Facebook album, Flickr, etc); you can also brief the Elite Designer indicating i.e. the style you'd like to have, your favorite colors, the picture you'd like to see as a cover or anything else: that's the advantage of having a professional designer – human - on the other side!
2. The Elite Designer will create a draft of your personal photo book and will send you a preview[AL1] of it; he/she will also take care of optimizing your photos to make sure they look perfect.
3. Approve the preview, and your pictures get printed in an high-quality hardcover 12x8.5" (30x21cm) photo book which will be delivered for free to your doorstep. Of course if you have some feedback, the Elite Designer will make sure to fine-tune your book until you're happy with it.

At the moment, there are two packages available at a special price for the public beta:
- Elite M ($79) the Elite Designer will handle up to 79 photos to create a book of 24 pages
- Elite L ($149) the Elite Designer will handle up to 200 photos to create a book of 50 pages
Extra printed copies cost $39 for EliteM and $55 for EliteL. Worldwide shipping included.

The launch of PastBook Elite comes after the rapid growth of PastBook’s first product, Moments (http://www.pastbook.com), that provides an easy way to create a simple photo book in minutes or even less: like the 1 click Facebook or Instagram Photo Book. The company noticed that people were very happy with the frictionless experience of creating a book with PastBook Moments, but some of them were still contacting the customer support (the PastBook Happiness Team) to ask for extra customizations or changes that they didn't have time/were-not-able to do themselves. PastBook started proposing the Elite service to its current user base in the beginning of summer 2015. Great results followed, and the company is now ready to open the service for more people - leveraging on the network of the top American & European professional designers built up in the meantime.

The private beta period of PastBook Elite showed that people are willing to spend a bit more money than they would normally spend on a photo book (but still less, comparing to going to a local photographer/publisher shop) in order to save their time and have a printed photo book they can be proud of, totally hassle-free.

Mainly the service was used to create books linked to certain events - both personal (i.e. Wedding) and business (i.e. party or company celebrations) - and family keepsakes (i.e. Holidays, Anniversary, Birthday, etc). Almost one third of all the orders was made as a gift for a dear one - that's really promising considering the upcoming Christmas Season.

Here at PastBook we are on the mission to help people preserve and relive memories in the easiest way possible. I'm so proud that with PastBook Elite we made a step towards achieving that mission: we are in the process of disrupting some principles of an industry that still sees most of the users struggling with very complicated tools when it comes to creating a keepsake of their memories. That's why so many people that try to use those tools keep postponing creating one. From now on, with PastBook Elite, any time you think about creating a photo book you just have to send your photos to an Elite Designer and you're done: he/she will do all the hard work for you. (Stefano Cutello, founder & CEO @PastBook)