So, I mentioned in a another post that I'm looking at ways to get my blog printed in a book. I mostly want to do it in case my blog suddenly disappears one day (hey - it happens); I want to have a physical backup so that all these memories are preserved.
With that said, I'm having a bit of a hard time deciding what to do. There seem to be two main companies that people use to print their blogs - Blog2Print and Blurb. And, well, you can tell how stubborn I am because I mentally refused to consider Blog2Print for a while for the reason that it uses the number "2" in its name instead of the word "to." Blech! I just don't like that at all. If my brain was my mouth and "Blog2Print" was a bite of food, my brain would spit it out.
Anyway, moving on from my mental preoccupations, I've looked at both companies. Blog2print seems to be preferred because of the ease with which it can be used - most people report that the whole process takes under thirty minutes. However, you are quite limited in formatting options and cover choice. Blog posts (in the book) come one right after the other, often splitting pictures, commentary, and short posts awkwardly between two pages. But again, it's super easy, and it (mostly) preserves the format of your posts.
Blurb, on the other hand, seems to be preferred because of customization options and price. Each page's format can be moved around, easily allowing you to give each post its own page. You can use your own fonts and customize the cover completely, as well. But there's the rub - it takes much longer than Blog2Print because of the freedom you are given. You can spend days and days customizing the whole thing.
Well, I took a look at Blog2Print yesterday just to see what a book would look like from them, and how much it would cost. Doing my whole blog up to this point - May 2010 through May 2012 - would be 398 pages and $150. (That's 198 posts and including comments, if you want to compare it to how may you have). They give you a PDF to preview, so I've taken a look at how it would be. The formatting, for the most part, is just okay. The perfectionist in me, however, cringes at the common awkward page splits between photos and their captions. It's also is missing any kind of photo/still of the videos in my posts. Some of the paragraph formatting is messed up, but that could be corrected by going into the blog post on blogger, fixing it, and then re-uploading the blog.
Another thing that's caught my attention is that there are some picture-heavy posts of pictures that I'm planning to put in photobooks from Shutterfly eventually. And it seems silly to duplicate so many of the pictures, when it adds pages and (thus) cost.
So, I think right now I'm leaning towards Blurb blog books. Yes, it would take me (a lot) longer, because knowing myself I certainly would get sucked into the customization and make every page look perfect, but I think I'd be more satisfied in the long run. It would also be a lot cheaper; I read someone's blog who got a 400+ page book for $90. I can also cut out a lot of the photos in the photo heavy posts, but keep the ones that are especially important or that have commentary.
I don't know. I'll download the Blurb program to try it out, at least.
Have you ever thought about using Blog2Print or Blub to make a blog book? What are your opinions?
My sister Julie uses blurb. She has really liked it. She has printed her entire blog with pictures and is now starting to do what we have done with shutterfly, only in blurb. She has all her blog posts from each month and then has a few pages afterward with all the other pictures, plus other funny moments and facebook statuses from that month. She is planning to do each year that way. She really likes it, but it does take a long time. She spends just as much time on it as I do on shutterfly. We compared books and we both agreed that shutterfly's pictures are a higher quality, but not too much. Another thing she likes about it is you don't have to be on the internet to use it. She can just download everything and then take it where ever she wants. She often works on it while Isabelle is at swimming lessons. Anyways, she has been happy with blurb and I've seen the books and agree that they look good. She hasn't experimented much with backgrounds because she wasn't sure how it would look. So she has just kept all of hers on white, but I think backgrounds would be cute. I have also been happy with how my blogs have turned out in shutterfly since I like the higher quality pictures. Good luck! I'm totally with you on wanting to make sure its all printed. I feel so much better knowing my blog is preserved!
ReplyDeleteI'm not as picky about the format. I just wanted the book NOW haha. Blog2print worked for me!
ReplyDeleteI don't have any useful input on the blog printing, but I think I'll be copying that idea from you! (After you pioneer it ;) Also, I just have to tell you, thank you so much for having our button on your blog! We get more traffic to our adoption site from your blog than anywhere! Crazy! Thank you thank you thank you! =)
ReplyDeleteOf course! I'm glad to hear that it's actually bringing people to your site. I've gotten a lot of views lately from people looking at the quiet book (one of the pictures got big on pinterest), so perhaps it's from that group! Anyway, I'm glad to hear it's working. :)
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