Remember when I told you that I had put a newspaper article on blooks* in a safe place and couldn’t find it? Well my filing system is not failing me, just my eyesight. Said article was exactly where I thought it should be but I glanced over it as it was folded in half and the side showing was all about travel. Now that I have unfolded it, and collected some other research, here’s a summary of blog to book options in no particular order:
- Blurb – this freeware enables you to collect all your blog text, links and images and puts it into a side panel from where you can drag and drop into your blook. (The auto-fill option puts each blog post on a separate page which is annoying for high volume, short post blogs.) Multiple layouts are offered but there is limited flexibility to mimic the text/image sequencing used on your blog. Blurb Support advise that they are working on improvements. Supports Blogger, LiveJournal.com, TypePad, and WordPress.com blogs;
- Lulu is a print on demand publisher that is promoted by Live Journal among others. It is not clear from their website whether they offer a software solution for capturing blog content but they do publish many blooks including a craft book by iHanna who talks about the process on her WordPress.org blog;
- blogprinting.com supports WordPress.com, Moveable Type and Typepad blogging platforms but not Blogger;
- HP Blog Printing Tools – this appears to enable you to print out your blog yourself but so far is only available for WordPress and Typepad; and
- Blog2Print is a widget that enables content owners on the Blogger platform and their readers to turn posts into a printed book with a single click. Additional compatibility with other platforms will become available “later this summer”. Check out the button on Jim’s sidebar (and read his posts) to see how this works.
A fair amount of fiddling around with formatting seems to accompany each of these DIY blog to book options but most blook publishers delight to holding the finished product. I found the same thing when I was preparing my album book from our European travels last year. And after all the dramas I had in securing delivery of my Kodak album book from the United States, I am pleased to see that there are now more printing options within Australia including www.momento.com.au
*A blook is a book created from blog content.
Leah says
Whoops, replied in the wrong place. I meant to say;
Thanks for those links. I tried out Blog2print this morning, and they currently only support 200 photos.
Ann Manby says
Hi, I work for SharedBook. Leah is correct. Blog2Print currently supports a maximum of 200 photos. Please let us know if you think we should expand this.