Donna Hawkins - March - A BLOG BOOK!

I know this has been done several times already on Projects Connect, and I know it'll be done several times more.  I was so excited to start on this blog book.  I knew from reading other's posts to plan more time than you'd think!  They were right.  I also wanted to use a different website than the other two, just to branch out and see what else was out there.  I also wanted to find a cheaper solution than Blurp or Blogs2Print.

I started a blog back in 2007, after Bevan and I had been married for a few months.  It was totally the thing to do back then.  Now, not so much, but I'll get into that later.  I was pretty religious about posting, even though we didn't have any kids.  The posts were mostly about our adventures and special moments of being newly-weds.  I was thinking at the time, I wanted to also start a family scrapbook, but I like having descriptions of what we were doing and not just solid pictures.  I had a lot of just plain writing and some posts don't even have pictures.  I mean, what was there to take pictures of? Us?!  Got PLENTY of those already!

Anyway, I searched online and found several companies that do online book publishing.  All you have to do is create your book in a pdf format and send it to them.  I chose Lulu because there were several recommendations online and their prices were very reasonable.  Now, comes the format.  I wanted it to be more like a "book" and less like a scrapbook with tiny descriptions.  If I had a copy of Adoby InDesign, that would've been nice to do fun, creative, multiple-page layouts.  I was so inspired by Sharon Thacker's blog-book pages.  Alas, the only program that would work was plain ol' microsoft word.  I had to copy and paste EVERYTHING... which I didn't mind because I made several revisions anyway.   Lulu is SUPER EASY to work with and have several options of sizes.  There was quite a price difference between 12x12 and 8.5x11, so I did the latter.  Once you choose your size, you download their free page template for Word and start copying and pasting.  I later found out there are free websites out there that will covert your blog to a pdf format, ready for a book.  I probably should've researched that a little better!

I wanted one book for the time before we had kids (aka, our 4-year-long honeymoon).  I also used some free online photo collage-makers for the posts with lots of pictures (roadtrips and stuff).  After about 20 hours of copying, pasting, formatting, moving, picture-switching, etc. I finally had a draft to export to a pdf and send to them.  I chose a book cover, the glossy hard-cover was standard,  found 15%-off coupon (which pretty much covered shipping) and ordered it.  They said it could take up to 20 days but it was A LOT faster than that.  Publishing took 2 days and shipping took 3.
Viola!
Final cost :  $31.15
Total pages:  80
Was it worth it:  YES!

In the end, it sorta resembled "Ackerson Kids Grow Up".  Huh...

Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with the final product.  It's not the super-nicest quality out there, but for the price, it can't be beat!  The look and feel reminds me of a hard-cover Dr Suess book.  The pages were thick enough and had a touch of gloss to them.  After reading through it, I found MORE typos and wanted the pictures to be even BIGGER.  For a couple extra dollars, I could've had them bigger (meaning more pages).  I might do it again someday and make those revisions, but for this writeup, it'll do!

I also regret not putting in the comments from other people.  I loved re-reading all those old comments and remember old friends that don't blog anymore.  Sure they announce stuff on FB every couple of years, but I really miss the in-depth family goings-on!  I like seeing a friend and knowing somewhat what's been going on with them (important stuff, new babies, etc).  I'm sad that the majority of people in my original "blog following" list haven't written anything in years.  A moderate example is Nora.  She took a little break, but then got back into it!  She didn't stress about back-logging all those missed posts, she just picked it up again.  Like there was no break at all.  Because people really are interested!  Go Nora!  I probably have the most boring life of all, but I'll let others decide that!