Which vendor offers the best value in photo books?

I promised one to a customer and am wondering whether to order from Apple, Shutterfly or one of the other suppliers.

It includes nudity.

Thanks!

I get prints made through Blue Cube Imaging
Then I use self stick albums & put the prints in the albums.

I think one of the best is blurb

Value can mean a lot of things. If you want a proper book, and you only want one or two, Blurb is the best of the cheapest options. A real lab like Miller's (or maybe Blue Cube) can make you a better book while also being very reasonable.

If you want the best quality while still being as cheap as possible (as cheap as 'best quality' goes, anyway) they best bet is absolutely to have prints made and stick them in an 8x10 album. TAP even makes some very high end leather books ...it'll probably set you back $130 for album and prints, but you'd be hard pressed to match that quality from a "real" book at double that price, even if you ordered ten of them.

The other nice thing about prints is that QC is almost always better. Or at least easier. I've dealt with several printing houses much higher end than Blurb, and have never gotten a product I liked the first time. That's just how it goes when converting RGB files to the CMYK system print shops generally use - even with BW images. When you make prints, there's not usually a conversion, and you're far more likely to get it back right the first time. If it's a lab you use regularly, there's actually a really good chance that no matter how high your standards are, you'll be happy the first time.

I got a coupon for a free Shutterfly book, so I tried them.  It was pretty easy to use their interface & to layout the pages.

The good news:  they are cheap.
The bad news:    they are cheap.

The photos were reproduced faithfully, but I would use images that are at least 1024 pixels in the longest dimension -- more would probably be better.  The paper reproduced the images well, with no front-to-back bleed through, but the paper was pretty thin.

I haven't used any other service, but I recommend using well edited / retouched images. 

Had no trouble using Shutterfly to produce nude images.  I kinda get the impression that there is no human oversight in the entire process.

Thanks for the useful info!

I use blurb to produce mine (of my own photography). They allow nude work, and the quality is really great - even the basic level is decent and you can select better options in terms of paper and cover. They can be a bit expensive - my photo book I was selling this past summer was around 60 pages and that's what drives up price oftentimes. I just priced the book accordingly though. They also have coupons all the time online and bulk orders are cheaper.

Blurb has great quality for the dollar, and an incredible number of layout, paper, cover and binding options.

Recently, however, I have become nearly obsessed with making my own albums, and using prints secured with photo corners (like scrapbooking). Not an especially cost or time effective method, but really adds to the handcrafted feel.