Making a Blog Book. A Trip Down Memory Lane.

So I have a new  little project I’m working on. .  . I decided to try to turn this blog into a BOOK. Yeah, kind of a neat idea. I’ve heard of people doing this, and that it was possible, so I decided to check out my options and see how easy or difficult it might be. It’s really not that hard. I’m chugging along at full speed now and have really enjoyed the process.

I’m using a service called Blurb and their book making software Booksmart. Blurb is the online interface where you upload and order from, and Booksmart is the software you install and use on your computer to put the book together. I’ve been using the Booksmart software for a few days now and I’ve been impressed. It seems pretty flexible. You can drag and drop blog posts into different pages of the book and there are dozens of different layouts to choose from. It also provides quite a few embellishments- backgrounds and graphics- to throw in too. But I’ve been impressed most with the ease of use and power. It’s relatively easy to import your blog into the interface and customize it. All you do is point the program to your blog (at wordpress.com or blogger.com, etc.) and it pulls all the info in, pictures and all. You can even specify a data range or category. Like I said, pretty powerful.

I’ve enjoyed the process of preparing this book. Over the last several days I’ve been going through all my old blog posts, fixing little typos here and there and adding photos. It’s been fun to reread some of these entries, revisit some old times. My blog covers about a five year period, our whole time in Indonesia. I forget many of the details. I’ve never really gone back over old blog posts before so it’s sort of interesting to reread these.  My how times change! I can tell a difference in my writing too. I think it’s gotten better over the years, less random and more cohesive.

It’ll be nice to have a hard copy of some of these thoughts to pick up and read from time to time. This book will be a nice companion to my journal. My writing style is different than my journal, so perhaps I slightly different story will emerge- or at least a different rendering of that story. That’s the benefit of multiple mediums. Each one gives a slightly different flavor. So why not, right? I’ll give it a try and see what comes out of it. Whether it’s a success or not, the process has been worthwhile.

Btw, if you want detailed instructions on how to turn your blog into a book, I found helpful instructions here: https://blog.blurb.com/turn-selfhosted-wordpress-blog-blurb-book/