Blurb Helps Contemporary Art Aficionado Publish Collection.

The Peterson Collection of Contemporary Realist Art Available Through Blurb Bookstore

SAN FRANCISCO -- Blurb, the creative book publishing service, today announced that The Peterson Collection of Contemporary Realist Art will be published for the first time in book form using Blurb's BookSmart[TM] software, and made available for purchase in the Blurb Bookstore. The Peterson Collection is the private collection of Gregory J. Peterson, acquired from 1972 through the present.

Blurb enables anyone to create, share, and distribute affordable, bookstore-quality books. Blurb's BookSmart is a downloadable, easy-to-use application that allows anyone to create beautifully designed books, by dragging and dropping photos and auto-flowing text, simply and easily.

The Peterson Collection will be made available as a 200-page, 4-color, hardcover catalog that brings together a significant portion of Mr. Peterson's personal art collection, including many works never before seen by the public.

"If not for Blurb, I could not have created a professional-quality book to appropriately represent my collection," said Gregory J. Peterson. "The traditional publishing route was simply not feasible from a financial, timeliness, or control standpoint. Blurb helped me to quickly and easily publish and share my collection with full control over the content, and retention of all profits from sales."

Peterson is a New York-based attorney, and is well known in art communities for having amassed an internationally known collection of realistic contemporary art over the last 20 years. Peterson's captivating collection includes photographs, etchings, watercolors, and works in other media.

"The Peterson Collection book is an excellent representation of Mr. Peterson's collection, and beautifully captures the detail in the reproductions, revealing brushstroke and surface interest," said Robert Fishko, owner of the Forum Gallery in New York. "Depictions, painted and drawn, of people, are notoriously difficult to print, and Blurb has done an outstanding service to the art shared in this amazing collection."

More than 40 living international artists are represented, including painters Robert Bauer, Scott Fraser, and David Ligare, and photographers Loretta Lux, Richard Misrach, and Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. Works by artists in the collection may be found in leading American and international museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the British Museum. All of the works are faithfully reproduced using Blurb's professional-quality printing service.

"Whether our customers are creating books with images from a family vacation or showcasing finely detailed works of art, they can absolutely expect a bookstore-quality book," said Eileen Gittins, Blurb's Founder and CEO. "Blurb's mission is to democratize publishing. Creating, publishing, and distributing a book is no longer a costly and difficult project controlled by outside forces, but an experience that's fast, easy, and completely under the creative control of the author. Mr. Peterson's book is a wonderful example of the entire process."

About Blurb

Blurb is a company and a community that believes passionately in the power of books: making, reading, sharing, and selling them. Blurb's creative publishing service is simple and smart enough to make anyone an author -- every blogger, cook, marketer, photographer, traveler, entrepreneur, poet, everyone. Founded by Eileen Gittins in 2004 and funded by Canaan Partners and Anthem Venture Partners, Blurb is bringing book publishing to the masses. Blurb's free Free BookSmart[TM] software runs on a Mac or PC; users pay only when they publish their book. The software is available for download at www.blurb.com.