A year after I started this blog I saw an ad for turning your blog into a book. Its similar to the photo album books that people are printing these days from weddings, babies, and other special occasions. I had one made for me when I retired, and we made one for my hubby when he retired too. In the days of people saving photos online instead of carrying them around, like me, its great to have something altogether like this to carry and show off.
My first book, the soft bound edition, that included the entire first year of my blog was surprisingly well made, only costing about $27. It was done by SharedBooks. The only odd part was the pictures were not always lined up with the text. But it still was exciting and gratifying to see MY gowns and everything I wrote about them in a BOOK!
So here I am now with two more years worth of photos and jabbering about them in my blog. And once again the anxiety of "what would happen if the website crashed and lost everything?" kicked in again. Of course I have all my posts saved on Word documents too but its not the same as "being out there".
Recently I got an email from Sharedbooks.com about a sale they were having at 20% off. Perfect timing! I was able to get some final photos from a recent event added and sent it off. I chose to use the same cover design as my first one too. With twice as many pages and photos, it still only came to $45. And it arrived in less than a week, paying the less expensive shipping of 1-2 weeks. This time I was given the option of either printing photos & texts the most compact way & using less paper, like it was the first time, or doing a better layout that would take more paper, thereby costing a little more. It really didn't cost that much more, and I think it looks much better.
This is the link for turning your blog into a book. http://blogger.sharedbook.com/pilot/enterBook.do?bookId=Blog2Print_Blogger . Its fairly simple and you can personalize a lot of it. Their customer service phone line is extremely helpful with any questions and assistance too. Because of the last day of the sale I was really having trouble getting mine started due to the heavy traffic online. I called their Customer Service Representative who downloaded mine for me & saved it, and this enabled me to go in and do the custom designs on it I wanted. They get my customer service award of the year!
My first book, the soft bound edition, that included the entire first year of my blog was surprisingly well made, only costing about $27. It was done by SharedBooks. The only odd part was the pictures were not always lined up with the text. But it still was exciting and gratifying to see MY gowns and everything I wrote about them in a BOOK!
So here I am now with two more years worth of photos and jabbering about them in my blog. And once again the anxiety of "what would happen if the website crashed and lost everything?" kicked in again. Of course I have all my posts saved on Word documents too but its not the same as "being out there".
Recently I got an email from Sharedbooks.com about a sale they were having at 20% off. Perfect timing! I was able to get some final photos from a recent event added and sent it off. I chose to use the same cover design as my first one too. With twice as many pages and photos, it still only came to $45. And it arrived in less than a week, paying the less expensive shipping of 1-2 weeks. This time I was given the option of either printing photos & texts the most compact way & using less paper, like it was the first time, or doing a better layout that would take more paper, thereby costing a little more. It really didn't cost that much more, and I think it looks much better.
This is the link for turning your blog into a book. http://blogger.sharedbook.com/pilot/enterBook.do?bookId=Blog2Print_Blogger . Its fairly simple and you can personalize a lot of it. Their customer service phone line is extremely helpful with any questions and assistance too. Because of the last day of the sale I was really having trouble getting mine started due to the heavy traffic online. I called their Customer Service Representative who downloaded mine for me & saved it, and this enabled me to go in and do the custom designs on it I wanted. They get my customer service award of the year!
These are some page examples from my book. I think the layout is much better now.
If you want to make your own photo book, not using a blog, just go to their main website. http://www.sharedbook.com/
That looks neat. I've been considering doing this for awhile, and really need too, since I have posts all the way back to 2005, but didn't know they could look as good as yours does.
ReplyDeleteWow!
Thanks for the tip,
Natalie
Thanks for posting about this ... I've been thinking about doing this 'just in case' for my other blog. I've got some photo links to fix up and then I think I'll have something for posterity.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fantastic service! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteZOMG, what a great idea.
ReplyDeleteLadies, I can HIGHLY recommend doing this, even if you don't think your blog would be that great. It comes out great!!
ReplyDeleteThe books look awesome. Thanks so much for sharing the information about this. You're success with this really motivates me get my blog printed.
ReplyDelete