Blog to Book??

I've been working on this lately....choosing some of my posts to put in a book for family history's sake.  So I am asking,  
Have any of you done this?  If so, what company did you go with? 

There are several out there so I don't know which one to choose.  I would rather go with one I know someone has been pleased with.  If you have put your blog into book form, please leave me a comment.

Also, another question:  Does it matter what size your pictures are in your blog book?  I'm trying to decide if I should make my pictures all smaller for the book, or if keeping my larger pictures will work as well in book form? Any other advice you can offer, I would SO appreciate.

Thank you!

12 comments:

Kathy's Red Door Welcome said...

I want to know what you find out because I think it's a great idea and I'd like to do it too.

the Rich girl said...

For a project in one of my classes, I took some of my blog posts and made them into a "personal history" type book. I did all the design and layout myself. It was quite the endeavor.

But, I think the easiest thing for you to do would be to use a company like LuLu. (I think that's what Aunt Mar used, but you'll need to check with her. Tyler has also used LuLu.)

As far as your pictures go, you just want to make sure that the pictures don't look pixelated on your screen. If they are pretty pixelated on screen, they'll probably look even worse in print.

Also consider how big your pages will be (when deciding how big you want your pictures to be).

I'm not sure how LuLu works as far as formatting and stuff--for that you'll have to ask Tyler.

Call us with any questions you have along the way.

Grandma Honey said...

Kathy..Stay tuned. Maybe we will get some help.

Karen...I have a question already. What is pixelated? And do my pictures look like that on your screen? Lulu is one I have never heard of, so I will google that. Thank you!

Scrapally said...

Jill, I used the one from cutest blog on the block. I just gave it my blog address and the dates I wanted and it layed it all out for me. Susan Tanner used it also. She had hers hard bound, I had mine soft cover. I did my whole year so it is like my journal. :) It wasn't that expensive either. But it won't do anything with your videos. good luck!

Scrapally said...

ps - it's blog2print.com and pixelated means grainy, all the little pixel square showing...yours don't look like that on screen so you are probably fine.

Grandma Honey said...

Scrapally...I will check that out. I knew Susan was happy with her blog book but I couldn't remember what company she went with. So thank you!

C Dawn's bucket said...

I've used http://www.blurb.com/

I like this because I can format the pages like in a publishing program so that each page can have more or less pictures, text etc. It also lets you know if the pictures are too large to print nicely.

If you can use WordPerfect to format your page the way you want it you can probably use blurb. It also slurps all your pictures and text into the book, it's easy to delete posts you don't want or to add other stuff that was never on your blog anyway.

They also frequently offer deals for percentages off your printing....

I also like it because it is a program that downloads onto your computer so everything is just stored on your own hard-drive until you send it to be published/printed.

If you have any questions let me know

Cynthia

Grandma Honey said...

Cynthia, Interesting. I will check it out. So if I don't put it in Word Perfect, it won't work? I'm just trying to understand.

Lisa said...

Great question & wonderful answers that I can use! I saw once when I had to log into my blog an advertisement from blogger advertising to print the book, but when I went to go find the link, it was never to be found again. It was like $14 which I found hard to believe. Blurb & Scrapally have great suggestions I'm going to use! THANKS!

Mar~ said...

Hi Jill,
I use Blurb.
I have loved it. It is a user friendly program. You can easily see how your photos look (or will appear) in the book before print. Your quality on the blog seems great. I change the sizes of my photos from page to page, depending on what I wan to emphasize. In blurb, it will slurp your blog for you and format it. Then you can go in and edit/make changes as desired. Or is you want it done quickly, you can choose to just slurp and print. I like the quality of the book and the paper inside! It is what I want for my photos! The pages are a nice weighted paper and look beautiful! I have heard of Lulu. I looked into it a while ago but didn't switch over. I plan to look into both again before printing again. I know they are always improving things!
It is one of the most rewarding things in the world, to see your words and photos and of course the PEOPLE you love in YOUR book! Yay for you! Can't wait to see what you end up doing!

Grandma Honey said...

You just gave me a great idea Mar. I'm going to make my pictures different sizes, too. Never thought of that for my blog book.

Susan Anderson said...

I use Blog2Print, but my DIL uses Blurb. I think both are good.

=)

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