Friday, May 1, 2009

Have You Ever Wished That Your Blog Could Be A Hard Copy?

Book Front

For as long as I have had a blog I have wished that I could have a hard copy of it. It always feels just a bit weird that we put so much our lives - creative or otherwise - out here in cyber space without any way to "have it to hold". It's not that I don't keep any other journals; I do, several written & visual - but I thought it would be great to have the information that it's my blog in a hard copy form so that I could easily page back through the years.

A year or so ago, while I was surfing about on the net, I happened upon Blurb. It sounded like the perfect solution - blog to book printing. Unfortunately, at that point in time, it was not playing nicely with Blogger & the company had no idea of when it would. A week ago I decided to have another look and, lo & behold, it now worked well with Blogger - and with a Mac too no less. I was thrilled & immediately got to work. I have decided to upload & have my blog books print by the year - so I started with 2007.

Book Back above

WoW! Am I ever happy with this company! The design interface is quite straight forward and easy to use. The only thing that sort of bothered me was ,when I was having difficulty deciding on the size of the the book ,(they have several options available) I discovered that you cannot start a book in one size & then change your mind & move to another size. You can, however, use the photos that you have uploaded - and move them to another size - though it seems easiest to me (at this point) to just get the size right from the beginning. The information - photos, written posts & links - from your blog is 'slurped' & is then auto populated to the book format. The maximum number of pages is 440 - which is how I discovered I really needed to go one year at a time. Surprisingly enough, it does not take that long to 'slurp' everything - then you select, play and order. I did not play around at all with the page set up , although you do have many options for lots of font choices and page layouts. I wanted the blog to look pretty much the way it does on line so I did not fuss with layouts or lots of fancy reworkings. Once ordered, the book practically flys to your door. I ordered my book on April 28th and it arrived today. Yowza - that's fast !

Book spine below

You also have a choice of ordering a hardover, hardcover with dust jacket or softcover. I opted for the less expensive soft cover for 2007 but am thinking that I may get a hard cover for 2008 and 2009 - since they will be quite a bit larger than 2007 was. The softcover is fine though, printing quality is excellent and the book is sturdily bound. I love it !!


Above you can see that any links you reference in your blog are printed at the bottom of the entry, right below the date of the post. So if you have ever wanted to be able to have a book from you blog - this is the answer - and it's a darn good answer too ! Thank you Blurb!

18 comments:

Vicki W said...

I have pondered doing the same thing. I'm glad to see your good experience with it!

Stephanie Pettengell said...

That's brilliant, the idea, the finished book and certainly your content. Mine would not look half as good. What a wonderful way to save all your blog posts.

Deb Lacativa said...

How supremely cool is this!?!
I've been tinkering with saving certain posts as word docs with the intention of putting them in a binder. Could be, someday, my time would be worth more and I'll let Blurb handle it! Will you be selling copies?

Michelle said...

Wow, Marie! I had no idea there was a way to do this. Your book looks great, and I'm going straight to the Blurb site right now...thanks for the information!

Anonymous said...

Wow, cool find. I wonder how it handles comments and videos. Thanks for letting us know about it.

SueS said...

Marie -
What a really cool idea.
Your work is all so lovely and colorful that it would make up into a wonderful blog/book. It would be ashame to have it get lost into cyberspace.

Sue

Fibreartist said...

Wow Marie, that is fabulous! I am so interested for the future since I am a more recent blogger! Is it expensive? Donna

Karoda said...

Marie, did you go back and edit any post for typos, grammar? etc? I've been wanting to do this but I definitely know I need to edit before turning into a hardcopy and well, like so many things I want to do, I haven't made time and space to get on it.

This is neat...can others order your book as well? does it get assigned an isbn?

Fannie said...

Excellent post! Thanks for your review. I, too, was disappointed that Blurb did not work with the Blogger interface. I'm so glad you posted your experience. I'll have a go at it. Thanks for sharing!

Lisa Walton said...

Thanks so much for finding this and posting about it. I have wanted to have this done for ages but thought it was a lost cause.

gunnelsvensson said...

Wow, this is so cool !!!

Stacy Hurt said...

Oh see... NOW it all makes sense to me. Your tuxie on the cover was a journal quilt, no? I drooled over them; they are in the Journal Quilt compenidum too. I saw them in Long Beach, mine were there too; but I was thrilled to see those lucid green eyes in person!

Love the idea of a book; I suppose I'll have to 'clean up' the blog though. Thanks for the link my red-headed sister in arms!

Shari said...

Thanks so much for this info - very helpful indeed!

Helen said...

This is such good news! I am excitied!!!! Thanks for sharing. :)

Laura said...

Thanks, Marie! I'm definitely going to look into this. One for Tatum and one for me!

La Tea Dah said...

How exciting! I have browsed BLURB and it looks great --- thanks for the suggestion!

LaTeaDah

Unknown said...

this is so darn COOL! I will have to do this too and I like how you do it by year....grat idea!

Jamie Fingal said...

Your book is totally cool and something that I have pondered. I like the idea of doing it year by year. I might have to venture to blurb to see what its all about. thanks for sharing your experience.

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