Make amazing calendars from your Instagram photos with keepsy

As you will have seen from my previous post, keepsy the photo book publisher has just announced their new calendar printing service.

Prior to this announcement, keepsy were kind enough to send me a sample calendar made up from some of my Instagram photos, and very nice it is too. Nicely printed on good quality lightweight card, from either your Instagram, Flickr, Picasa or Facebook photos, these calendars will look good hanging on any wall. Priced at $19.95 USD for a 12 month calendar or $25.95 USD for 18 month one, these calendars would make a great personalised Christmas gift for yourself, friends or family.

Main features of the new keepsy calendars are:

• The site integrates Instagram, Flickr, Picasa and Facebook APIs, so you can get your photos from any of these services -- not just Instagram.
• A cool new feature is the ability to access a *friend's* Instagram feed to make gift calendars or albums. We think this will be a big hit during the holidays. We're the first to enable this, as far as I know. (It's important to note that the person must be one of your Instagram followers if you want to access their photos -- so you can't make a book or calendar out of just anyone's pics. You also need accept terms that you have (or *would* have, if it's a surprise) their permission to print their photos. This limits the scope of givers and receivers to close friends and relatives -- which is perfect for the gift scenario -- but doesn't allow, say, Justin Bieber or Snoop Dogg fans to go create celebrity fan books, or for errant creeps on the service to just highjack your photos without permission.) 
• A 12-month calendar is $19.95, while an 18-month is 25.95. 
• We're shipping to 22 countries via USPS - cost varies depending on destination. All US domestic shipping is via FedEx ground and is $7.95 
• Turnaround on domestic orders is 5 to 10 business days. We recommend ordering by December 12th to avoid any issues with the holiday delivery rush. For International delivery, we recommend ordering by December 5th.

For more information visit keepsy.com

Comments

[espekayen]

Another company offering Instagram calendars! They might not have an app, but at least Keepsy's prices are prominently displayed on their website. Calendagram, take note.

[Skip Hunt]

pass. RedBubble does great calendars in a larger format for around the same money. Might be a bit less I think.

[Skip Hunt]

Just noticed they want $7.95 on top of the calendar for shipping? Ouch!!!

[espekayen]

Yeah, these photo calendars are expensive but at least you're getting a unique, personalised product.

[espekayen]

By the way, as far as I can tell, RedBubble do not provide a personalised calendar service. For that reason you cannot compare them with keepsy. Custom-made stuff is always going to be more expensive and rightly so.

[Blake]

@espekayen thanks! You're right - I think one would be very hard-pressed to find a custom calendar elsewhere that matches our price-point and quality. Print-on-demand products are always going to be a bit more expensive since they are almost never ordered in bulk. (Then again, anyone that wants 10 or more of their calendars or albums printed can always contact us for a discount - we'll work something out ;-)

For the record, Red Bubble's prices generally start about 20% higher than ours, though they are indeed larger print size.

[Blake]

@skiphunt All of our domestic orders are sent FedEx ground - hence the $7.95 shipping fee.

[Robyn | Gemini606]

I actually have one of the Keepsy calendars and it's quite nice. I can't wait until New Years to show off my photos. My recent experience of creating my first Keepsy gift album demonstrated how easy and fun it was to build your custom product on their site. Can't wait to order calendars as gifts!

[Skip Hunt]

With the $7.95 s&h I beirve your product is a bit more expensive & smaller than RedBubble. Magcloud is even less.

I'm not going to knock it until I see what control, if any, the user has over the layout.

I am very concerned that you are allowing anyone who follows you to make calendars of your work. And all they have to say is that they have your permission. Your explanation seems vague. I need to see if instagram is allowing this reproduction by anyone who follows you without the author's permission. Can you please explain this in more detail? If by participating on instagram I'm granting permission to third POD companies like yours to reproduce my images without my permission just because two parties follow each other, then I'd like to know so I can delete my instagram account & images. Just because two users mutually follow each other does not make them "friends & family"' as described above.

I think I'll send them a note of concern myself because the way its described above sounds disturbing.

[Skip Hunt]

@espykayen what do you mean RedBubble doesn't offer a personalized calendar service? They have for years & you can even pick which month you want the calendar to start: http://www.redbubble.com/people/skiphunt/shop/calendars

Ps: the prices of my calendars have about $7.50 markup so you can see the pricing is close if not a bit less with RedBubble.

I don't see how this is any different other tan the shipping is more, the price is a bit higher for a smaller calendar. And they are evidently letting anyone who follows you reproduce your images without your expressed permission.

If I've got this wrong, please explain.

[Sheeple Liberator]

Has anyone ordered a calendar or album from any of these companies? I would like to know what the print quality is like given that Instagram pics have a max resolution of 612 x 612. I imagine it's not a big deal when the photos are sized quite small, but what about when they're sized large?

[Blake]

Hi Skip,

Thanks for your comments and concerns. You have a beautiful portfolio on RedBubble - I can definitely understand your attraction and loyalty to the service.

If I may, I'd like to clear up any confusion about your statement above, ("...evidently letting anyone who follows you reproduce your images without your expressed permission.")

It's actually the reverse of this. We require that a user must be followed by another in order to allow access to photos via the Keepsy photo selector. In other words *you* must follow the user in order for *them* to even access even the permissions stage of displaying your photos in the Keepsy selector. So this does not mean that just anyone that follows you can print your photos - it's the other way around.

We also require that the user that wishes to print the photos assert that they have permission from the person following them to do so. No other POD photo services that I can think of require this verbose assumption of liability on photo upload or access. Finally, we have an opt-out page for those that would prefer to never have their photos printed by friends under any circumstances.

You can find it here: http://www.keepsy.com/instagram/unsubscribe

(I've already taken the liberty of unsubscribing your IG account since it doesn't sound like your cup of tea. We can always reverse it if you ever change your mind)

While no system is perfect, as all of your photos on Instagram are easily publicly viewable and downloadable in the original upload size from any number of services (webstagram, statigram, etc etc) without any confirmed permission and, consequently publishable on any competing POD services (Shutterfly, Snapfish, Apple, etc), we feel that we actually offer a more secure and procedural method for ascertaining permissions, and thwarting wrong-doers.

The feedback we've had from other folks in the IG community has been resoundingly positive once they understand that how the system works and that we have their best interests in mind.

I'd welcome any other thoughts, feedback, criticism, rants, help, etc., you have -- you can reach me directly at blake at keepsy dot com. Plus, I always like talking with people from Austin :-)

[Skip Hunt]

Blake,

I guess I still don't understand. So, I was already subscribing to your service automatically in order for you to unsubscribe me? Huh?

I'm not a "loyal" supporter of RedBubble. I think their calendar pricing is too high as well. No room for reselling markup. I have seen their calendars printed and they're beautifully done. I only have calendars there because I already had those images uploaded and it only takes about 10mins to make one in their system.

Look, I don't have any issue with your calendar product as I have not yet seen any examples of it's print quality, nor have I even looked at your interface. Guess I'll never know since you've already unsubscribed me, but that's no problem. I don't see myself using this product based solely on pricing. Not that you're too high for folks wanting to make calendars or anything. It's too high for markup and that's my only concern. People can get nice calendars at Target for about $10 so they ain't gonna buy my instagram keepsy callendar for $25 (unless it's full of cute kittens or puppies of course) ;)

My only concern is that Instagram and now Keepsy have evidently subscribed and unsubscribed me to some service that allows anyone who I'm following and is following me back... to reproduce my images by just saying in your permissions page, "yeah, Skip said I could print his images". How would you, me or anyone else ever know or find out that were true?

Also, when people follow me, I take a quick look at their work and if I see some images that resonate for me, I follow them back. That doesn't mean I want to give them carte blanche to reproduce my images in a calendar.