Banner Sponsors

elle Apr 10, 2009

One of the students in my blogging class said she was making a book from her blog.  She was using software from the site http://www.blurb.com/ to put her blog posts into book form.  The software, Blurb Booksmart, will download your blog posts (called "slurping") into a book form on your computer.  Then you can change the layouts, play with the fonts, etc.  When you have the book the way you want, blurb.com will print it for you.  I thought their prices were pretty reasonable.

The software only works with hosted blogs such as Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress,com.  My blog is self-hosted, but I have a Blogger account and was able to export my posts to a blog there.  Then I used the software to "slurp" the blog.  It was very easy.  Photos have to be exchanged for high resolution ones, so they will print nicely.  (Neither the exporting of blog to Blogger or the slurping of your blog changes or deletes anything on your original blog.)

The software gives you two view modes - an editing mode and preview mode.  I have screen shots on my blog post about it, if you want to see what the software looks like.  There are several layouts you can pick from for each page.  I am having fun working with it. 

http://www.ellifolks.com/blog/books/mak … ng-a-blog/

Hugs,

Ellen

DebbieD Apr 10, 2009

Cool!!!  That looks like a neat tool 

elle Apr 11, 2009

Hi Debbie, 

I found the software easy to work with.  There are example of finished books on the blurb.com site.

http://www.blurb.com/learn_more/flip/

And there is a video tutorial on making a blog into a book: http://www.blurb.com/help/video/blogbook

You can sell your books in their bookstore, also.  I'm not sure how that works.

Hugs,

Ellen

matilda Apr 14, 2009

Clever idea!!