My Review -- A Book of My Blog Entries from Blurb.com

Ever since I started blogging, my intention had been to print out blog entries, and put them together in a binder or the like. For a while, I was doing a good job printing them out, but then I got a back log of entries that needed to be printed.

Finally -- I resolved to print them all out. But, then I heard about the company Blurb.com. I wish I could give credit to which blog I read about them on, but now I can't remember. Sorry!

I was drawn to Blurb.com because they have a mechanism for specifically printing out books of blog entries. (By the way, they also can print lots of other books, such as books for photography, recipe books, etc. -- it's really worth a trip over to their website. Plus, you'll get to see nicer pictures of the books that I personally took of my book.)

So, anyway...I downloaded their free software, and started in on a book of my blog entries from December 2006 (when I started my blog) through December 2007, since I had decided that maybe I would like to include a year at a time in a book.

The software was easy to use, and the blog books are compatable with most of the main stream blogging hosts. You just put in your username and password, and wait while it downloads all of your text and pictures.

I liked that I was easily able to tell it which blog entries I wanted posted and which ones I didn't. Actually, the default was to print them all, and then I was able to go through and uncheck the ones that I didn't really want in. I did have about 99% of the blog entries printed though. I only deleted things like about such and such blog having a contest or whatnot.

Even so, if I had one of those kinds of posts that had more information in it, then I sometimes printed them. But, a nice option is that you can edit your postings once you are working on your book.

This editing came in handy (although it did add quite a bit of time to what I put into it) because it appeared to default to putting one entry per page. I don't know if there is a way to have it fit as much as it can on a page, or if one entry per page is the only option.

However, since I didn't want a HUGE book, I took the time to get as much on a page as possible. This meant a lot of cutting and pasting. But, I didn't really mind, and it gave me extra time to really get the book looking like I wanted it to look.

They have various size options available, but I went with the 8x10 portrait size. They have 7x7, 8x10, 10x8, and 13x11. The prices vary based on size, as well as number of pages. You can read about the breakdown on this page, where they have listed number of pages by size and cover type.

You also have the choice with most sizes between soft cover and hardcover. Eric said as long as I was spending the money, I needed to just spend the extra $6 difference and get it in hardcover. I'm glad that I went with that option now, as I like the way it looks better and think it will stand up over time better.

This is the cover of my book. It also has my name under the pictures, but I took that off for showing it here. Hardcover books come with a dust jacket. The dust jacket is the only thing I was slightly disappointed with, and that was only because the printing is just a little bit off. Neither Eric nor my Mom noticed this, and it is not visable in this picture. However, in person, it is not as sharp as I would want it. But, it wasn't really all that big of a deal.

This is what most of my pages look like. Because I apparently don't have a tendency to use a lot of pictures (something I would perhaps like to do a little more of), my pages are mostly text. But, I am okay with that.

On the right hand page above, you can see that I added a short blog entry (still keeping them in chronological order) to the bottom of that page. This helped cut down my book length by over 100 pages.

Here is one spread that ended up with pictures for both of the pages. I like the way that looked too. On these pages (shown), I didn't try to fit in extra blog entries. However, near the end, I did have some pages that had pictures where I did add unrelated blog entries to those as well, and they still looked fine.

Although the pictures don't look great in my picture, they are actually very nice in the book!

As a matter-of-fact, ALL of the pages look great. Even though I was slightly disappointed with the dust jacket, I thought the actual book contents looked amazing!

Above is the back of the dust jacket. (There is also printing on the spine of the dust jacket. I now wish that I had put "Volume 1" as part of the title, but I will just remember a volume number for next year!)

Oh, and again ignore the bright white spot. That's just where my name is on the back. I really liked that I had space to write on the back.

I really think my book is just great! I definitely have plans to continue using Blurb.com to print blog books! I spent $39.95 (plus shipping) for my book, which is hardcover and 142 pages (thanks to all my time in shortening the book length through copying and pasting).

When I received this book, we took the time as a family for me to go through it and read funny things that had happened to us over the past year aloud. It helped to reinforce to me that I am blogging to record our family's life. We laughed and remembered things that had happened -- often they were things that were long since forgotten. Except, well, with this book now, they don't have to be forgotten.

This book reminded me that while it's easy to get caught up in comments, blog traffic, and how good other people's blogs are, this blog is for me and my family. I love that others stop by and I have had so many opportunities to meet wonderful bloggers, but my purpose was reflected in this book, and that warmed my heart.

Okay now, I have a confession -- I like the book so much that I don't think I can wait for next year for another one, and I may even have to find an excuse to have another book printed. Not sure what it will be about (maybe photographs), but I am sure that whatever it is, it will look fabulous if I use Blurb.com!

*Please note: I did not receive any incentive to write this review. This was just simply because I was so pleased with my own purchase, and wanted to share this company with people who may be unfamiliar with it.