I'm disappointed with the book module in Lightroom 4. It seems to be bound to one single publisher (blurb) and while I don't even mind using blurb, the biggest disappointment is that you cannot customize the page layout. (Yes, you can chose different layouts and make some slight adjustments, but you can't, for example, decide where exactly to place a picture.) For me, that is a complete deal breaker.
Anyway, I am now wondering what the best way is to make your photo books starting from Lightroom, which is where all my photos live.
I was unable to find any plugin that does the job.
So now, it seems I have to accept that Lightroom should be used for what it's best at (archive and develop images) and use another software that is best at photo books.
My impression is that this is Lumix PhotoFusion, but it does not seem to integrate in any way with Lightroom, i.e. I'd have to export images from lightroom and import them back into PhotoFusion.
So I'm wondering if anyone has any better solutions.
Perhaps I should mention one of the reasons why I's like a stronger link between the two products: I intend to work on the book(s) over a long period of time, basically pasting new pictures into the book everytime I import new images into Lightroom. So it would be convenient if there was an easy way, for example, to paste undeveloped/ unedited images into the album, to see what they looks like and then do the fine-tuning/ developing later.