Nutfield Genealogy: Blog2Print

Showing posts with label Blog2Print. Show all posts

Saturday, May 21, 2016

May 2016 New England Genealogy Blogger Bash

Five years ago we hosted the first New England Genealogy Blogger Bash at our home in Londonderry in August 2011 on the eve or Hurricane Irene. On that occasion, many bloggers drove home into the storm. Since then that first meeting we have had much nicer weather, also met on Cape Cod (twice!), Manchester-by-the-Sea, and Farley, Massachusetts. We have also met up in person at the NERGC conferences every other year.

We forgot to take a group photo this time around, so multiple photos will have to do. I'll post all the participants and their blog links below.

We had a good meeting about expanding the blogger presence at the NERGC 2017 in Springfield, Massachusetts, and explored blog books and other book publishing services. But best of all was just the socializing, and eating! We had bloggers from Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut join us. Christine McCloud wins bragging rights for the longest drive.

It's always nice meeting up in person, instead of meeting "virtually" online.

Participating bloggers (no particular order):

Barbara Matthews http://blog.demandinggenealogist.com/
Polly Fitzgerald Kimmett   http://pk-pollyblog.blogspot.com/
Christine McCloud   https://beautifulwatergenealogy.wordpress.com/
Tim Firkowski http://www.thegenealogyassistant.com/
Barbara Proko   http://wilnoworcester.blogspot.com/
Elizabeth Pyle Handler http://frommainetokentucky.blogspot.com/
June Stearns Butka https://damegussie.wordpress.com/
Jake Fletcher   https://travelyourgenealogy.com/
Dan Young https://discoveringyourpast.wordpress.com/
Sara Campbell http://rememberingancestors.blogspot.com/
Erica Voolich   http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/
Heather Wilkinson Rojo   http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/

Monday, March 2, 2015

The Two Companies that will print your Genealogy Blog Books

Over the years I have tried many self-publishing companies to produce photo books for the family vacations and our collection of vintage photographs. We’ve tried Shutterfly, Blurb and Artifact Uprising, as well as Walmart. They all have their merits for photographs and coffee table style vacation books, and all have different price ranges and varying levels of difficulty.

My entire blog is "backed up" in blog books,
and this shelf also has other vacation and photo
books I've made with vintage family photos and documents

But when it comes to preserving your genealogy blog (or any blog) in book form, there are only two companies I I know that can do this: Blurb and Blog2Print. Both have their pros and cons. Both companies will automatically slurp your book (click HERE to read more about that process), and both companies will auto-populate a book for you with the chosen posts. Both companies are the only ones out there that will handle blogs with ease. I suppose you could make PDF files of any blog post and import them into any on-demand publishing software, but that could be very time consuming.

Left: A book produced by Blurb Right: A book produced by Blog2Print
both books contain about 120 pages, and three months worth of posts
(I average 20 to 30 posts per month, with lots of photos)

Why make a blog book?

I like books. There is no feeling like curling up with a book to read your old blog posts. Sometimes the family will gather around the computer to read a post or two. However, at a family gathering in the living room, at the beach, out on the lawn by the grill, a book will be passed around and read much longer and with more meaning than a mobile device. There is nothing like curling up with a small child on your lap to turn the pages of a book to look at the photos of family members in days long gone by. You just don’t get the same feeling with a Kindle or laptop.

There is also the obvious benefit of having your beloved posts in book form to donate to a library, local historical society or genealogy center. Not to mention that once you have made the book, you can print out additional copies for gifts. Or to have on your shelf as a paper “back up” of your blog. One hundred years from now your descendants may be saying “What’s a blog?”, but there will be no questions about your book of stories.

The easier it is to produce a blog book, the easier it is to preserve it. Randy Seaver commented on John Tew's blog post about producing a blog book (see below) that it would take him too long to produce a book, so he hasn't done one. There is no excuse now, Randy! The slurping process is so easy that I produced a book of 3 months worth of posts (over 120 pages with photos) in less than 15 minutes with Blog2Book.

This book was produced by Blurb
It did some editing for the photographs

Things I like about Blurb: There are lots of ways to edit the book to make it look more like my blog pages online. Anyone can order additional copies of my books from the online bookstore at their website. My favorite thing is that my book projects reside on my own hard drive, so I can work on them at my leisure and edit for as long as I like until I am satisfied with my project. Sometimes their bindings are sewn for books under 120 pages, but even with small projects this is not guaranteed. You cannot request sewn vs glued. It's the luck of the draw lately.

Blurb - about 140 pages, about $59 paperback, and about $73 hardcover. Standard paper

Cons with Blurb - Sometimes the editor is a bit fussy and hard to deal with. They also cannot handle my blog anymore with over 2000 blog posts with lots of images, and so I had to find another company to print my posts. If you have less posts, try Blurb, but be prepared to spend a lot of time learning the editor. I've had a few printing problems with Blurb over the years, and they have sent me new books at no charge but it is a difficult process since there is no 800 phone number for customer service, you have to deal with them all through email.

I enjoyed making Blurb books of the first four years of my blog, but now I guess I've "outgrown" the ability to use their company anymore. I had a lot of experience with their editor, and will still use Blurb for other genealogy projects, vacation books, photo books etc. The experience of dealing with their customer service via email to try to overcome this problem is what drove me to Blog2Print... see below.

UPDATE - July 12th - Blurb has discontinued their service of "slurping" blogs into their book software as of July 1st. https://support.blurb.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/204802303?

This book was produced by Blog2Book
I didn't do any editing, so you can see some strange formatting.
It's OK, but I prefer the editing capabilities at Blurb

Things I like about Blog2Print - All they do are blogs. So they have perfected an easy system for slurping your blog into a book. You can produce a book with NO editing if you prefer. They can handle my 2000 posts with ease, and it was easy to select the posts I wanted for publication. I LOVE the automatic table of contents at the front of the book. I haven't had to deal with customer service yet, and have only produced four books (one years worth of blog posts).

Blog2Print - About $75 for 120 pages hardcover. I haven't priced out the softcover for the same number of pages. It's a bit pricier, but there are many more coupons and special offers, so I saved up my projects for when I had an offer.

Cons about Blog2Print - Glued bindings. Not many editing options (but that makes it easier for beginners). More expensive than Blurb by about $10 or more per book. The larger size is nicer for easier to read font (especially if it is a gift for older relatives). Blog2Print offers more coupons and bigger discount codes than Blurb.