I’m currently working on a little project – a gift to myself – in which I am taking many of my old posts and having them bound into a book. It’s a pretty big undertaking but I’ve kind of had blog ennui lately and I’m hoping that this will make me feel as though my blog has more permanence, and is a more tangible accomplishment.
I wasn’t really going to write about it here, but some bloggy weirdness happened yesterday. Step one of the process is to go through all my posts – and there are almost seven years worth – and pick out the good ones. As I was reading through them all, I found a typo in a very old post, from Thanksgiving 2007. So I edited the post and fixed the typo, because I am anal that way, and for some reason, the post got fed out to Google Reader as if it were a new post.
So thank you to those who commented, but just wanted to say that I am not, in fact, at my mom’s house right now, enjoying pie and Thanksgiving turkey.
Although…pie. Mmmm. Road trip!
TurtleHead 
I just did the same thing! I went through all my posts from 2009 and had them made into a book. I haven’t got it yet but I am excited to see it. It took longer then I thought so I had better start working on 2010 now. 🙂
I hope you really enjoy your book.
Ha! Well that explains that. I’d kind of wondered why you were celebrating American Thanksgiving.
I recently printed up a bunch of my posts into book form using Blog2Print. It turned out okay, though there were aspects of the formatting that I wish I’d had more control over. Still, I mainly just wanted a hardcopy of my stuff so that if something disastrous happens to the blog I still have all my writing.
Hmmm, I’m interested in doing that! Can you give me any details of how you do it?
Alison (Party of 3)
Hi Alison, Mary Lynn mentioned above that she used Blog2Print – not sure what that is. I will be using Blurb.com. You have to download their software and install it on your PC, and then use it to make your book. Then you upload it and print.
The Blurb software (BookSmart) works with many blogging platforms. You can suck your blog posts directly into the software and make each blog post a page (for example). Then you can add as many photos as you want – I am decorating my blog posts that are about the kids with an age-appropriate shot of the kiddies.
Then you can choose to have it printed in hardcover or softcover. I am looking at around at 200 page hardcover book (I am only including selected posts – the dance posts do not make the cut!) and it will be around $60. I think that’s in US dollars.
It’s actually a fair bit of work for me because I have to a) read all my posts to pick out the ones I want, b) go through years of photos to pick out the best ones to include, then c) custom design each page using a variety of layouts to accomodate text/photos in mixed designs. So this is a pretty big project for me and it’ll be my Christmas present.
But you can use the BookSmart software to make it really easy if you just want to print out your blog posts in a nice format.
Plus, you can re-sale your book – if you think your fans would like a copy, you can advertise it on Blurb and they can go there and order their own copy. Whoo hoo!
Me too! I think it’s a great idea. Plus then I would finally feel published! 🙂
Other Allison
See my EPIC comment above. Short answer: Blurb.com. :).
yes i was wondering about the american thanksgiving thing. funny. i wonder if the changes i made yesterday to some old posts made it to the front of the line. must check
i love this blog book idea. something i must look into. but holy project batman! though it does sound like the sort of thing i would totally love to do!
Thanks for posting this explanation. I hadn’t noticed it in your post, but I do subscribe to several (ok – more than several) feeds through Google Reader and occasionally something will show up that is weeks or months old. Now I wonder if it’s because they corrected a typo or added some new info and it comes out to Google Reader again as a new post but with the old date. Weirdness indeed!
And in other news – congrats on your upcoming book!!!
I am so happy to hear you are doing this! WHAT a fabulous gift to yourself! And a creative, satisfying project to boot. Good for you!
I’ve had ‘print blog’ on my to-do list since the summer. Actually I was hoping it would be my summer project. It still hasn’t happened. I tried Blurb, but found it a bit too labourious so I switched to Blog2print. I want to include photos which means digging up the original files to make sure they are print quality. It definitely is a project and a half!
Thanks, Lynn. I’ve been halfheartedly printing out posts and putting them in a binder so that I have a hard copy of my blog, but some of the older posts have broken photo links (grrr) and I kind of gave up. I guess with around 400 posts, I’d have to pick and choose too. Thanks for the info!