Blurb BookSmart Alternative: Where to Go Now That BookSmart Is Gone
TL;DR: Blurb deprecated BookSmart and migration to BookWright is documented to break fonts, older photos, and tables. Printing costs at Blurb have escalated — a 240-page 8×10 dust-cover book runs around $141. If your scrapbook library is stranded in BookSmart and you don't want to inherit BookWright's bugs, the practical move is to archive the projects you already have, then start new work in a modern web-based tool that doesn't depend on a discontinued runtime. MyScrapBook Studio is built for that fresh start — template-led layouts, drag-and-drop editing in any browser, and no legacy file dependency to convert.
If you built your scrapbook library in Blurb's BookSmart over the years, you already know what happened: the desktop app was retired, the official migration path is BookWright, and BookWright's conversion of your existing projects is rough. Fonts swap. Older photos refuse to load. Tables break. People who spent ten years on a photo-book archive are staring at a half-broken successor app and a question with no obvious answer: now what?
This guide is for that audience specifically — long-time BookSmart users who need a real path forward, not a generic "try our new tool" pitch. We'll go through what actually happened to BookSmart, where BookWright falls short as a successor, where Blurb still legitimately wins, and a step-by-step migration to MyScrapBook Studio for the projects you want to keep making.
In this guide:
- What happened to Blurb BookSmart?
- Blurb / BookWright vs MyScrapBook Studio — feature comparison
- Where Blurb still wins
- How to move your scrapbook library to a modern tool
- Practical migration guide: BookSmart to MyScrapBook Studio
- Build your next chapter in a tool that will still exist
- Frequently asked questions
What Happened to Blurb BookSmart?
Blurb deprecated BookSmart and replaced it with BookWright, a successor desktop application. The migration process has significant documented problems: fonts do not convert correctly between applications, older photos lose support, and tables fail to transfer. Users who built scrapbook libraries in BookSmart over years now face a choice between a degraded migration to BookWright or abandoning their projects entirely. In parallel, Blurb's printing costs have escalated — a 240-page 8×10 dust-cover photo book runs approximately $141, described in user reviews as "astronomically high." BookWright itself carries its own complaint trail on G2: "software riddled with bugs and idiotic layout choices with functions not working." As of 2026-06, Blurb has not announced a path for users whose libraries don't survive the BookSmart-to-BookWright migration cleanly.
If that summary maps to your situation, you are in the right place. The detail underneath each of those points is worth knowing before you decide what to do next.
BookSmart → BookWright Migration Problems
The BookWright import dialog opens BookSmart files, but the conversion is not lossless. The most common breakage patterns reported by users on the Lightroom Queen forum thread on Blurb and elsewhere:
- Font substitution. Fonts that BookSmart embedded are silently swapped for BookWright defaults. Captions and titles that were carefully laid out shift position because the substituted font has different metrics.
- Older photo support. Photos imported in older BookSmart versions sometimes fail to render at all after conversion — they appear as empty containers in BookWright.
- Table handling. Tabular layouts — common for recipe scrapbooks, family trees, and timelines — frequently lose their structure entirely on import.
Whether your specific projects survive depends on how complex the layouts are and which fonts you used. Simple grid layouts with system fonts often convert fine. Anything with custom typography, tables, or older imported imagery is a coin flip.
High Printing Costs
Even if BookWright works for your projects, the print pricing is a separate problem. A 240-page 8×10 inch photo book with a dust cover runs around $141 at Blurb, before shipping. For a family making one book a year per child, the price has crossed the line from "premium keepsake" to "this is going to compete with college tuition."
Legacy Bug Accumulation
BookWright's G2 reviews are not gentle. The most-quoted line — "software riddled with bugs and idiotic layout choices with functions not working" — captures the general tone. Common complaints include the layout editor freezing on large projects, photo containers refusing to accept drops, and the spell checker flagging correctly spelled words.
Some of that is the cost of any maturing desktop app. Some of it is the cost of inheriting the codebase that replaced BookSmart without a clean rewrite. Either way, it's the daily experience of using BookWright as a working tool.
Blurb / BookWright vs MyScrapBook Studio — Feature Comparison
| Feature | Blurb (BookWright) | MyScrapBook Studio |
|---|---|---|
| Software type | Desktop app (free download, BookSmart successor) | Web-based (any browser, any OS, no download) |
| Legacy migration | BookSmart → BookWright conversion breaks fonts, photos, tables (documented) | Fresh start; no legacy migration burden |
| Printing costs (2026-06) | ~$141 for 240-page 8×10 dust-cover; "astronomically high" in user reviews | Digital-first; print via third party separately |
| Software bugs | Reported "riddled with bugs and idiotic layout choices" (G2 reviews) | Modern Next.js / React stack — no legacy bug accumulation |
| Commercial publishing | Amazon + Ingram distribution for self-publishers | Not available — digital-first only |
| Platform | Windows / Mac (desktop install) | Web (any browser, any OS) |
| Free creation | Yes — BookWright is free; print costs money | Yes — free tier available |
| Template system | Linear page-by-page editor | Template-led with layered ScrapbookPaper backgrounds |
| Updates and support | Active but slow; runs on Blurb's release cadence | Continuous web deploys; bug fixes ship same week |
Sources: Lightroom Queen forum thread and G2 Blurb reviews.
Where Blurb Still Wins
This guide is about migration, not character assassination. Blurb genuinely does some things MyScrapBook Studio does not, and any honest comparison has to name them.
Professional print quality at scale. Blurb's printing operation is one of the best photo-book print pipelines in the consumer market. Colour reproduction, paper weight options, and binding quality are real strengths. If the printed object is the entire point and the layout is straightforward, Blurb still delivers a high-end physical book.
Amazon and Ingram distribution. For people who actually want to sell their photo books — self-published photography monographs, indie cookbooks, family histories that go to a wider audience — Blurb's distribution tie-ins with Amazon and Ingram are a unique offering. MyScrapBook Studio does not do commercial distribution and isn't trying to. If you are publishing a book for sale, Blurb's pipeline still makes sense.
Print integration in one workflow. With BookWright you design and order from the same tool. With a digital-first app like MyScrapBook Studio, you export and order separately through a third-party print service. For some people that's an upgrade — more printer choice, better pricing. For others it's an extra step they don't want.
The question is which of those advantages outweighs the BookWright migration cost for your library. For people whose projects are personal scrapbooks rather than commercial books, the calculus usually tips toward starting fresh in a modern tool.
How to Move Your Scrapbook Library to a Modern Tool
BookSmart project files (.bsproject) are not directly importable into most modern web-based tools — including MyScrapBook Studio. The practical migration path: open each project in BookSmart (while it still installs), export individual pages as high-resolution images or PDFs (File → Export in BookSmart), and archive those exports to a cloud folder or external drive. That archive becomes your permanent record of completed projects. For new projects going forward, start in a modern tool without carrying the legacy file dependency. MyScrapBook Studio begins with a blank canvas or template — you import your photos and build the layout from scratch, with no conversion layer that can corrupt fonts or break images. The first new project is the clean break.
What You Can Recover From BookSmart Projects
Two things are recoverable from a BookSmart project, even if the project file itself never opens again:
- The finished page images. Exported as high-resolution PDF or JPG from BookSmart, these are essentially the printed book in digital form. They are not editable, but they're a permanent record of completed work — which for most family scrapbooks is the actual goal.
- The original photos. The source images you imported into BookSmart are still on whatever drive or library you imported them from. If your photo library is well-organised, this is the asset you want — it's the raw material for any future scrapbook in any future tool.
Two things are not realistically recoverable: the layout itself (the typographic choices, photo arrangements, embellishment positions) and any text you wrote inside BookSmart that you didn't save elsewhere. Both can be rebuilt if the project was meaningful enough to redo. For ten-year-old projects that already exist as printed books, the rebuild usually isn't worth it.
Starting Fresh vs Rebuilding
For BookSmart users with hundreds of projects, the realistic split is:
- Archive everything. Export PDFs and back up the originals. Treat your existing library as a finished archive, not a live project set.
- Pick a small number of projects to rebuild. Maybe one or two albums that are unfinished, or that you've always wanted to update with new photos. Rebuild those in a modern tool.
- Use modern tools for new projects. Every new scrapbook from this point forward starts in something that isn't going to be sunset in the next conversion cycle.
The rebuild path is faster than people expect once you stop trying to recreate every typographic detail. The point of a scrapbook is the memory, not the font. For anyone new to web-based scrapbooking tools, the complete beginner's guide to digital scrapbooking covers what the workflow looks like end-to-end.
Practical Migration Guide: BookSmart to MyScrapBook Studio
The practical path from Blurb BookSmart to MyScrapBook Studio requires three steps. First, archive your existing projects: open each BookSmart project, export individual pages as high-resolution images (File → Export Pages), and save them to a cloud folder or external drive — this preserves your work permanently regardless of software changes. Second, create a free MyScrapBook Studio account at myscrapbookstudio.com. Third, build new projects from scratch using your archived photos and MSS's drag-and-drop editor. BookSmart project files are not directly importable into MSS or any modern web-based tool, so there is no automated conversion — the migration is a fresh start with your existing photo library intact. A full step-by-step walkthrough is available at MyScrapBook Studio's BookSmart migration guide.
The migration is straightforward in concept and a few hours of work in practice. The detailed walkthrough at the BookSmart migration guide covers the PDF export, photo organisation, and rebuild flow with screenshots. For people on macOS specifically — and most long-time BookSmart users are on Mac — the digital scrapbooking software for Mac overview covers which web-based tools work best in Safari and which features are Mac-specific.
The key thing to internalise: there is no .bsproject converter for any modern tool. Anyone selling you one is selling you a long road of broken layouts. The clean path is archive plus rebuild — and the rebuild is much faster than the conversion attempt would have been anyway.
Build Your Next Chapter in a Tool That Will Still Exist
The BookSmart story is the same story every desktop scrapbooking app of that era ended up with. Adobe AIR went away. Flash went away. macOS dropped 32-bit support. Windows tightened code signing. Every desktop scrapbooking app from the late 2000s and early 2010s had to either rewrite from scratch or get sunset, and the rewrites have not gone well across the category.
Web-based tools sidestep that whole cycle. There is no runtime to deprecate, no operating system version to drop you off, no installer that suddenly won't sign on a new Mac. When the browser updates, the app updates with it. When the company ships a feature, you have it the next time you load the page — no download, no migration, no waiting for the desktop release cycle.
That doesn't mean web-based tools are immune to going away — every tool can disappear. It means the failure mode is different. If a web tool shuts down, you still have your finished exports. If a desktop tool's runtime is deprecated, you might also lose access to the source files. BookSmart users learned that the hard way.
Start your next scrapbook chapter — free at MyScrapBook Studio's editor. A free account gets you the template library, the ScrapbookPaper background system, and unlimited project saves. The first new project is the clean break.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Blurb BookSmart still available?
No. Blurb retired the BookSmart desktop app and replaced it with BookWright. The BookSmart download links are gone, and existing installs receive no updates. If you have BookSmart already installed on an older machine, it may still open your project files — but this is a closing window. Export everything as PDF now while you still can.
What replaced BookSmart?
Blurb's official replacement is BookWright, a successor desktop application. BookWright is free to download and works for new projects, but the BookSmart-to-BookWright migration has documented problems with fonts, older photos, and tables. For new work, BookWright is functional. For converting an existing BookSmart library, it's a coin flip per project.
Can I open my BookSmart files in BookWright?
In theory, yes — BookWright includes a BookSmart import option. In practice, the conversion is not lossless. Fonts get substituted, older photos sometimes fail to render, and tabular layouts frequently break. Simple projects often convert cleanly; anything with custom typography or complex layouts is at risk. The pragmatic move is to export your BookSmart projects as PDF first, treat that as your archive, and rebuild only the projects you actively want to keep working on.
What is the best BookSmart alternative?
It depends on what you want. For commercial publishing with Amazon or Ingram distribution, Blurb itself is still the answer — BookWright is the only tool with that pipeline. For personal scrapbooks where the goal is the memory rather than commercial print, web-based tools like MyScrapBook Studio sidestep the runtime-deprecation problem that killed BookSmart in the first place. The right move is to archive your BookSmart projects as PDF, then start new work in a modern tool — desktop or web — that isn't built on a sunset runtime.
Is MyScrapBook Studio free to use?
Yes — MyScrapBook Studio has a free tier that includes the template library, the ScrapbookPaper background system, and unlimited project saves. You can build, save, and export full scrapbook projects on the free tier. Paid tiers unlock additional template packs and premium ScrapbookPaper kits. Print orders go through third-party print services and are priced separately.
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