Saturday, July 30, 2011

Blog 2 Print

Blogger is advertising a service called, Blog 2 Print, with which you can turn your blog into an actual, bound book. Out of curiosity, I decided to give it a try.

You can choose which posts from your blog you'd like, or just choose all of them, including pictures, and then the program does the page layout and creates a numbered table of contents. I decided to publish the first year of my blog, which turned out to be about 30 pages in the book, for a cost of around $20.00. I designed the cover, then decided on the paperback version, rather than hardbound, to save money. I wanted to see the quality of their cheapest option.

Overall, I'm pleased with the results. The finished book looks like an 8" by 11" chapbook and the paper quality is great. The images are true and crisp. It's nice having a bound version of my blog to read and see the progression over time of my posts and events, much easier than clicking on "older posts." I think this could be a really nice option for people who have a blog for their poetry or artwork (there's a book option for blogs that are primarily images) and want to create a chapbook to show to possible editors. This isn't a cost effective option if you want to make a lot of books, though. $20.00 per book is a lot of money for a chapbook to sell to readers, but for gifts or to show off your blog at conferences, it's a great option.

There may be other options out there for a better price per unit, so I'll do some research. Do any of you know of other Blog 2 Book type services?

1 comment:

Leslie said...

Thanks for this tip, Terena, I'll have to check into it!