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/

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. 

 

The table of contents in a book
produced by Blog2Book
is automatic, although you can opt out.

Read what other bloggers have to say about this subject:

John Tew, blogger at Filiopietism Prism on Blurb Books

http://filiopietismprism.blogspot.com/2015/02/want-to-preserve-all-your-genealogy.html

Lynn Palermo, blogger at The Armchair Genealogist with a comparison chart

http://www.thearmchairgenealogist.com/2014/05/on-demand-publishing-comparision-for.html

Cheryl Fleming Palmer, blogger at My Heritage Happens, on Blog2Print

http://www.myheritagehappens.com/2011/01/blog-2-book-with-blog2print.html

The links to the On-Demand Publishing companies mentioned above:

Artifact Uprising  https://www.artifactuprising.com/

Blog2Print  http://blog2print.sharedbook.com/

Blurb  http://www.blurb.com/ 

Shutterfly   http://www.shutterfly.com 

Walmart Photo books http://photos.walmart.com/walmart/storepage/storePageId=Photo+Books

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The URL for this post is

http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-two-companies-that-will-print-your.html 

Copyright © 2015, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Flip-Pal Project #2 -

Post #5

Project  #2   Photo Books

I’ve tried several photo book companies over the past few years, and I’m going to recommend my favorite two companies at the end of this post.  When using your Flip-Pal scanner for a book, you can create a folder full of photos or documents just for your special book project, and also add images you may have downloaded previously.   Here are some fun examples of photo books I’ve created with scanned images.

Scan and download photos, tickets, etc for vacation books
Here is our trip to California last summer!

Vacation Books:  Scan or download all your photos from a vacation 30 years ago, or one you took last month.  If you shared a vacation with cousins or family, publishing an extra book is simple.  If the vacation 20 years ago included children who are now grown up with their own families, it would be fun to gift one to the whole family to “remember when!”

A Mother’s Book:  This could also be a New Mother’s Book, or perhaps a Grandmother’s Book, or even a Godmother’s Book.  In this case, I scanned images of all my mother’s maternal lineages, and also images of her as a young mother, and then her grandchildren.   This book turned out so nice I made a version for my sister and for my mother-in-law, too.  Someday I’ll make one for me!

Every Father's Day we take a photo by the same tree
This book for my husband contained 22 years of photos scanned together

A Father’s Book:  If you read my blog you know that every Father’s Day I photograph my daughter and husband under a tree that was planted on his first Father’s Day.  It’s become a very popular subject for our family.  Perhaps you have a similar tradition?  Do you have photos of an annual Father’s Day cook out?  Ball game? Trip to a family spot such as the beach or favorite park?  It’s easy to fill 20 pages with images, scanned tickets, game programs and text pages filled with written memories.

Some of my Blog Books
Do you recognize the cover photo?

Blog Book:  Regular readers know that every once and while I put my blog posts into a Blog Book.  This is a popular Christmas item in our family since my blog is full of family stories and photos.  You can publish all your blog posts or perhaps just all those that have to do with a particular branch of the family, or about a town or location for your gift recipient.  If you have a Civil War buff on your gift list, why not put all your Civil War blog posts into a book?   For your gravestone loving friend or family member you could publish all your gravestone photos or blog posts.  This idea can be stretched a million ways.   Blog2Print will automatically "slurp" your blog posts right into a project. 

Genealogy Books:  Most of these companies allow photos or PDF files to be used.  If your genealogy program doesn’t export charts in PDF form, you can use one of the free online conversion websites such as www.zamzar.com or www.doc2pdf.net.    These charts can be imported to books, just like photos, and text can be written or also exported from your genealogy program.  I know that Family Tree Maker exports genealogy reports as text, you can check your favorite program for the same features.

There are many companies on the internet specializing in self published books and photo books.  I’ve found that I prefer www.Blurb.com  and www.Shutterfly.com     Of these two companies, I prefer Blurb because the project is saved on a file at my own hard drive, and I can print whenever I’m ready.  Other companies have you save the project at their own cloud on line, and have deadlines before erasing your project.  I’ve been most happy with the quality of the paper and bindings at Blurb, too.   However, Shutterfly often runs great specials and coupons.  Blurb rarely has discounts.

Step #1 Scan your favorite photos for your project and then
download to your computer.  You can edit the photos (repair spots, turn
them black and white, change ovals to rectangles, etc.) or leave as is.

Step #2 This is the Blurb BookSmart software
You upload your photos to BookSmart and they appear in the left column.
Drag and drop them into the pages on the right.
Add text (or in this case, it downloaded my blog posts)

All the companies have websites or downloadable software that requires you to download the photos chosen for your project.  The blog books require you to enter your blog URL and then select the posts you want included in your book.   Editing then includes moving the photos around in a pleasing way and adding text.  Most of the software is simple to understand, but then again, I’ve only used a few of these companies listed below.

Cost               *****   (very expensive, but some small paperbacks run under $10)
Difficulty        ***       (you need to be somewhat computer savvy)
Wow Factor   *****   (the books look great, especially the larger format size!)

Caution!  Be sure to order early, because printing slows down during holidays and you want your book by Christmas or Chanukah or Three Kings Day!   During slow times your book can go into a queue and be ready in a week.  During holidays such as Christmas or Mother’s Day, the queue can take several weeks from the day you submit your order.   Start your projects soon, and get them into the printing queue!

Special offers:

Blurb is offering 15% off your total order on books ordered by 30 November 2011 with the promo code HOLIDAY at checkout.  www.blurb.com     Books that are text, photo books, cookbooks, etc.

Shutterfly:    check  for coupons at the special offers page http://www.shutterfly.com/special-offers

LifePics :  I learned about this option through the Flip-Pal website.  www.lifepics.com offers printing of your photos and photo books at locations near you.  Choose a location from the website, download your photos and pick up your project later.  I saw that there was a location very near me at my local CVS store, but this location didn’t offer the book option.  There was a second location at Ritz Camera in Derry that does offer books within an hour.  Very cool!

Snapfish:  check for special offers at this link http://www.snapfish.com/snapfish/storepage/storePageId=Store_Offers_Page

My Publisher photo books has special offers at http://www.mypublisher.com/specialOffers

Lulu  photo books, calendars, cookbooks, etc. at www.lulu.com

Blog2Print   specializes in black and white books for blogs that are mainly text, starting at $10.95!  They also produce pricier colored books for blogs with photos, with easy to slurp applications for Blogger, TypePad and Wordpress.   www.blog2print.com

Disclaimer- I was chosen by Flip-Pal to participate as a blogger in the Simple Gifts Genealogy Blog Hop event, and I received a Flip-Pal scanner to use and evaluate.   I was not compensated by any of the book publishing companies listed above.

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Flip Pal Project #2", Nutfield Genealogy, posted November 17, 2011, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/11/flip-pal-project-2.html: accessed [access date]).

The Father's Day Tree

These photos were a hit last year, so I'm posting it again with a new photo at the end....  Last year I put all the photos into a Blurb book for my husband for a Father's Day gift, and the whole family enjoyed seeing the tree and the people change over the past 24 years.  If you want to see last year's post, which has almost alll the tree photos, please click on this link http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/06/fathers-day-tree.html

1988, Father's Day, the day we planted this oak tree

1991

1994

1998

2004

2008

2010, last year's Father's Day photo

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Top Ten Stories for 2010

The coming of the New Year is always time for a few "Top Ten" lists. Here are my ten most popular stories posted this year, as calculated by the statistics page on my blog. Thank you to everyone who read my blog this year!

10. Treasure Chest Thursday- The Imprisonment Quilt, judging by the search terms I've seen lately on the statistic page of my blog, this story attracts both quilters and people researching Queen Lili'uokalani on line. There were also quite a few people searching under "Iolani Palace" and most interesting were the number of search hits for "Iolani Palace Frosted Windows". If you are curious about "why the frosted windows in Iolani Palace?", you must read this story!

9. The Value of Posting Brick Walls on Genealogy Bulletin Boards, need I say more? Isn't everyone searching for ways to break through those genealogical brick walls?

8. Baseball and Genealogy Research, was a fun story and it generated a record number of email. There is at least one baseball player in almost everyone's family tree. There were also many comments with ideas and links for good places to research old baseball records and players, so be sure to read the comments from readers if you read the story.

7. Blog Caroling - James Pierpont and Jingle Bells, this was a last minute entry for the year, and perhaps it was popular because of the Christmas theme. In looking at the search terms, "Civil War" and "abolitionist" came up quite a bit. If you are curious why, you must read about James Pierpont!

6. Internet Searches vs. A Real Library, was a surprise hit with readers and with search terms through Google, Bing and other search engines.

5. Family History Day, Concord, NH, 23 October 2010- another surprise hit, but perhaps folks were searching for directions? more information? registration links? And all I did was post some information about this upcoming event.

4. Ellis Island Oral Histories- How I Learned Something New- one of my favorite posts, and I guess a lot of readers liked it, too!

3. Beauport Mansion, this was a post I did on a historic home in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which has generated lots of hits on Google and Bing for Henry Davis Sleeper, the builder, and for his parents Jacob Henry Sleeper and Maria Wescott. There must be a lot of folks researching the SLEEPER genealogy.

2. Thanksgiving Proclamation 2010, Wow, I'm so glad to see so many people are interested in the story behind Thanksgiving, as well as interest in the Mayflower Society and New Hampshire governor John Lynch! Remember, you can't have your Thanksgiving dinner until someone signs this proclamation every year, LOL!

1. Canobie Lake, was a story I did about a local amusement park which is now well over 100 years old. I'm surprised by the number of hits on this by search engines, and I chalked it up to folks searching for directions and information during the summer. However, the hits keep on coming, even though the park closes after Halloween. I've surprised that this was the #1 story, but then again, there were a lot of surprises on this list.

Three posts tied for the most comments of all time: Treasure Chest Thursday-Publishing a Book for my Blog (a story about using Blurb book software to "slurp" your blog posts directly into book form- and I've recieved loads and loads of email from other bloggers since this was posted about their adventures into self publishing their blogs, genealogies and photo books), and Diabetes and Genealogy (another surprise, I guess diabetes runs in lots and lots of family trees), and also Vote for your Favorite Genealogy Blog, which was about the nominations for the Family Tree Magazine Top 40 Genealogical Blogs. Comments are some of my favorite things, so keep it up readers!

The most popular of all things on my blog, passing all posts and even the Canobie Lake story by double, is my page of "Surnames to 9 Generations". I'm thinking of expanding this to perhaps 12 generations, but since genealogy is exponential, this would be quite a large page! It makes me happy to think of all the hits on this page, and maybe they were made by some distant cousins!

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

People are Blurbing All Over!

In the past few weeks several Genealogy Blogs have mentioned various Blurb book projects of great interest. I hope they spur you on to some new and creative uses for preserving information, photographs and documents.


T. K. at Before My Time created a book project on her Schulte cousins. It is collaboration with a cousin, and I know that working on a Blurb project online with collaborators is easy. T. K. also is the one who figured out that any book under 120 pages will have a sewn binding, which is important to many family historians. I already had the experience of a wedding book disintegrating at a family gathering. For your information, it was not produced by Blurb and it had a glued binding. The bride was very distressed.

Kathy at I Will Remember just received her copy of her blog which had been “slurped” via Blurb. The software automatically downloaded her posts into a book, and she spent a few days editing it for her final approval. The photos on her post looked great, and she thought the whole process was easy and quick.

The Grand Prize goes to T. J. Rand, who wrote to me that he read my blog last spring and checked out the Blurb website. T.J. not only found it interesting, but created 10 books for the Epsom Historical Association! Included are 5 books on cemeteries, a book on the oldest house in town, a book on the Epsom Free Will Baptist Meeting house, and two books on the first 100 years of the town history. You can check them out at the Blurb Bookstore at this link http://www.blurb.com/search/site_search?search=epsom+history&filter=all

T. J. Rand’s books are an extremely creative project for archiving local historical information. The books are available for sale online with a small profit to benefit the Historical Association of Epsom, New Hampshire. They will also be selling a few copies at their Old Home Day on August 14th. The town library has plans to purchase copies of all them, and one was also donated to the town library. You can preview the first fifteen pages of each of these books, and perhaps come up with some creative ideas for you own family or town history. As T. J said in an email “....even though the information may be available electronically online or in other formats, there is nothing like a book.”

In the next few weeks I’ll be slurping three months of posts from Nutfield Genealogy into another book, and also creating a coffee table sized, hard cover photo book of our trip to Hawaii. No more paper and scissors scrapbooking for me!

NOTE: You can get 20% off your Blurb order by using the code LIBERATION until the end of July 2010. Work fast to take advantage!

DISCLAIMER:
I was not reimbursed or offered any free products by Blurb.com
I'm just a Blurb fan.


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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Blurb Blog Book Update

My Blurb Blog book

I’ve received many emails, comments and Facebook message about my post on Thursday “Publishing a Book for my Blog”. Most were questions from readers and other bloggers, asking about the process of “slurping” from Blogger to Blurb. Other readers wanted to know how to use this as an additional backup for their blog, which was an interesting idea. Here are some new facts I have uncovered:

1. Blurb’s software “Book Smart” imports blogs from Blogger, Live Journal, Typepad and Wordpress.com. You just select the blog service and then enter your blog’s URL (web address) and the software imports ALL your posts. You can then select which ones you want to have in your project by checking off them off the list. The BookSmart software is free.

2. You can have Blurb.com print out your project in a bound soft cover or hard cover book. Or you can print it out yourself, to your printer or to a PDF file. I’ve used the printer option to edit my work before sending it to the printer, because once you hit SUBMIT you cannot edit your project!

3. All your projects are saved on your own hard drive, in a folder called “BookSmartData”, and each project gets its own folder here with several files inside it for your text, photos, etc. You can then backup this folder onto your own external hard drive or internet service for safe keeping.

4. The earlier books I made with Blurb.com were sewn bindings, however today I received my copy of my Blog book and it WAS NOT sewn. My earlier projects were 40-80 pages, and this one is 132 pages, so maybe this is the difference? The quality of the paper, photo printing, cover and everything else is unchanged. I don’t know how this new type of binding will stand up.

5. Blog now offers a new type of premium paper. I don’t know if it is archival paper or not, but it a bit more expensive than the paper I’ve had them use in the past. I’m happy with their regular paper.

6. Putting your book project (blog book or photo book) up on the bookstore at Blurb is a good way for relatives to preview your work. It is also a good way to explain the binding/printing process to someone else who is trying to figure out what a finished project looks like. You can remove the book from the bookstore at any time with just a click. I’ve used the Blurb Bookstore to peruse other people’s projects, to get ideas for my own projects. There are lots of genealogy books up on the Blurb Bookstore right now.

Thank you to Carol from http://draft.blogger.com/www.reflectionsfromthefence.comfor asking me some very good questions over the past few days. She is the one who found out that in BookSmart you can print to PDF to save a copy of your blog, which would be an interesting way to preserve a copy of your blog on your own hard drive.

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Treasure Chest Thursday - Publishing a Book for my Blog

Over the past few years I’ve used Shutterfly.com and Blurb.com to create photo albums. Both were easy to use, both were about the same price, with similar options for how the finished product looked. After seeing the final printed versions of books, I decided to stick with Blurb. Not for any particular reason other than the Blurb book had a sewn binding, and the Shutterfly was glued. I made up a book of family photos with Shutterfly, which promptly fell apart at a family reunion after being passed around, and open and shut, and held up with “Look at this!” far more roughly than the average book probably would be treated. The Blurb bound books have stood up well over time.

One more plus for Blurb, your book resides on your own computer instead of residing in cyberspace. You can save and back up your own projects, instead of having a time limit on another company’s server. I know that once Shutterfly deletes your project, it’s gone forever. Also, Blurb allows you to sell your finished projects at their bookstore, which works out well for multiple copies of things, such as for family reunions.

I’ve tired of gluing and cutting and buying acid free materials for scrapbooks. Of course, I still do this for old photos and other ephemera, but for things already scanned, new photos from vacations, or other items already residing on my hard drive it’s hard to beat the easy to use software at these publish your own websites. The drag and drop options make it simple to easily put a book together, so simple your kids can help out. Groups can even collaborate together over the internet to put pages together or share photos.

I’ve made Mother’s Day books with generations of photos of the ladies; family tree books with charts, photos and documents; vacation books; graduation books; and a book of 30 years of photos for the Simmons College Crew Team. Then I saw recently that the Blurb software, which is called “BookSmart” can slurp your blog into a book. I was curious, so I slurped several months of posts into a book, just to see how it looked. It looked GREAT! I was so excited, and there was very little editing to do. I played a little bit with increasing the font size, and I moved around some photos, removed a few posts that I thought were boring, but otherwise the book was done! Just in time for Mother’s Day, since my mom was my first fan, and she is still my biggest fan. (Sorry, Mom, no surprises this year!)

Blurb also has a widget to put on your blog, in case you want to sell your book. I’ve placed a widget on my blog; just to see what would happen if I left it there a few weeks. Personally, I think the books are expensive, but at an OK price for a gift for someone special.

Check out my book by clicking on the image in the right column, and you can turn the pages to see the first fifteen pages. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to do your own book, or at least investigate the possible choices on line for producing a project like this. I can only comment on Shutterfly and Blurb, but some other companies you can try online are Lulu.com, Apple, Picaboo.com, and Mpix.com.

(I was not compensated in any way by Blurb.com or Shutterfly.com for my comments, but if they would like to pass along a coupon or two I wouldn’t object!)

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo
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