Sunday, January 11, 2009

Blog to Book

Okay, so I've had several questions lately about the blog to book thing. I decided I'd just ahead and make a full on post about it.

Blurb.com is still not able to support blogger to upload your blog to their book format. However, this does not mean you can't make a book using blurb. And quite honestly, if you are just creating your book as you blog, it's the better option because you can just upload it entry by entry.

Anyhow, all you do is choose the "photo with text" option when creating your book. (Don't try to do blog to book b/c it doesn't work for blogger.) Once you've got the book started, (this is what I do) enlarge the photo from your blog by double clicking, then drag and drop it onto the photo page of the book. I like to choose a page that allows me to add lots of pictures at a time and then I go back and organize and rearrange them how I want. Next you just copy your text from your blog and paste it into the text portion of the book. (I promise it's self explanatory once you try it.) Then you can use blurbs page options to arrange the page how you want it. Blurb saves your book as you go, so you can do one page at a time or 100 if you feeling like it. When you are finished, you hit the publish button, it uploads it back to blurb's site and publishes it for you.

There is also another option I heard about from a friend. It's called bloggled.com and they are promising a blog to book program sometime this coming year. So I'll keep checking on that. In the mean time, get you book started! They are SO fun to have. My kids (and myself) love to go back and read through them.

If you have more questions let me know and I'd be happy to help you more. (If I can. I certainly don't consider myself the blook guru.)

17 comments:

Deanna said...

THank You so much!!! I've been wanting to ask, but know you're super busy!!!

Natalie♥ said...

Thank you tons!!! That was so nice of you to help us all out. I am going to try this soon, if I have problems I will be getting a hold of you for help. :)

Miki said...

Look at you! I will definitely flag this post and do it when I finally do it! It just sounds so overwhelming, but you do make it sound doable, and fun.

Cool...head nod to you.

Lee Ann said...

I didn't get one for Christmas this year.....guess I'm gonna have to do it myself. :-)

Mama Williams said...

You're a guru to me. Thanks dear! I've got to get going on it again. Can you believe I still haven't scrapped Kayla's baptism!! Crazy how the time flies.

Lula! said...

I want to do this with my own blog...then again, it's bad enough that I print such drivel on the internet...like I need it bound and put out on a coffeetable somewhere. :)

Karin said...

What a great idea! Can you delete any posts you may not want in the book? I'll have to tell my girls about this too! Thanks for stopping by my Welcome to Alberta post today. Appreciate the visit.

Wendy said...

Oooh! Thanks a bunch! I was curious about this. Thanks for posting this info.

Allisyn said...

Is there a way to add additional pages to your scrap book, or are you stuck with just 22 pages per book?

Elena said...

Allisyn- You can have as many as 400 pages. I always do around 200 cause I think that is a good thickness, but it just depends on you preference.

ClancyPants said...

I've been working on my book myself with Blurb's program. BUT I didn't know that you could take the pics directly by the double clicking thing!! I've been uploading from my computer and it's been driving me nuts. You just saved me SO much hassle, my friend. THANK YOU!!!!

Anonymous said...

I just found another site called sharedbook.com and you can upload your blog like you did on blurb. I uploaded mine to make sure it worked, and it did. I think they only support blogger, but I'm not sure. I don't know what kind of quality they are, but it should be pretty comparable to the other site. Happy blog-booking!

CB said...

Elena I was just curious. I notice that your blog address does not include blogger.com in it but it looks like a blogger blog in every other way. How did you do that and does it make a difference with Blurb?

CB said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Elena said...

Cherie-It's just a custom domain that we own. The blog is still posted through blogger, it just points directly to my own domain. You can purchase a domain and then in your settings- publishing, have blogger point directly to that address. If you type .blogspot on my address it will also bring you directly here. And no, it makes no difference with blurb.

Anonymous said...

I didn't even know that you could do that. Cool!

CB said...

Elena - I just wanted to comment on this post again and let you know that Blurb sent me an e-mail and they have fixed the problem and are now supporting Blogger again! yayyyyyy

I am so excited because my other books turned out so beautiful I didn't want to have to go somewhere else:)