Into Real Pages -- A New Blog-to-Book Producer (December 20, 2020)

Ever since I began blogging I have worried about how best to preserve for my sons–and now my granddaughters–the fruits of my family history blogging efforts.  As I first mentioned in a blog post dated February 20, 2015 (three years into my blogging), having the blog exist only out there on the web was not enough to ensure its survival for descendants now and into the future.  At the time, I had discovered Blurb as a source for easily converting my blog into book form.  I used Blurb for two volumes of a 12" x 12" hardback reproduction of my blog into book form.  But then Blurb stopped supporting the Blogger format for "slurping" the blog content into a book project that allowed me to review and edit the content and look to best reproduce the blog in book form.  And all the time I continued posting on the blog so that content was growing, but capture was at a standstill.  This past year I decided I had to do something about finding a replacement blog-to-book provider.

After a few hours of research online this past summer, I finally settled on a new to me provider known as "Into Real Pages" and as a result I have completed a trial run of another book form volume of The Prism covering three months of posts from 2013 (that is how far behind I am).  The book arrived this week and I must say I am pretty happy with it despite some limitations.

The new Volume 3 has a completely different look than the first two volumes, because duplicating the same look I had with Blurb proved to be either too difficult or not possible (as you can see by comparing the look below with that from the original post on my blog-to-book project back in February 2015).

Into Real Pages currently supports Blogger and other popular blog formats (and I hope they continue to do so).  For this first trial run, I captured quite easily and quickly three months worth of blog posts from 2013 and they were automatically put into a book project form for me to review and edit.  The editing ability is broad and easy, but there are some limitations imposed in the present form of the Into Real Pages application (which is done entirely on the web).  I found the editing pretty easy and frankly less involved and time consuming than Blurb was.  The photos were better placed with Into Real Pages and required much less moving and correcting.  Like Blurb, Into Real Pages does not provide an exact duplication of the layout and look of the blog posts themselves, but it does a very good job of laying out the essentials with a minimal need for correction, moving, and editing.

Here is an inside look at one of the blog posts that can be compared to the original Blogger post of August 19, 2013. 

This also illustrates one of the limitations of Into Real Pages that is apparently a feature of their application and cannot be changed.  Each post has its original title converted into a full-page title page, which is superfluous inasmuch as it duplicates the blog post title that appears automatically as the heading of the post immediately beside the created title page.  Not only is this redundant, it increases the pages in the book and thus the cost.  This is something I hope Into Real Pages changes or at least gives the creator control over.

There are a couple of features of Into Real Pages that I like more than Blurb.  Foremost of the improved features is the table of contents at the front of the book (called "Chapter index" by Into Real Pages).  This allows one to find exactly what page a particular blog post starts on, whereas Blurb just placed the posts in the chronological order in which they were "slurped" into the project (unless one edited the order).  Blurb provided page numbers within the book, but no way to have a table of contents or an index to find exactly where a post could be turned to--they simply followed in chronological order throughout the book and some posts ran into more than one or two pages.  With Into Real Pages one can see the actual page where a particular post begins and turn directly to it.  It makes the book more user friendly in my opinion.

There is another feature that I think I like, but it is really not necessary and, as with the redundant subject pages, serves to make the book length longer and somewhat more costly–but it does look nice and is growing on me, which is good because as I understand it the feature is imposed and cannot be deleted.  [That having been said though, I have to confess this was a first attempt with Into Real Pages and I might not be fully versed in the use of the application and what things can be changed.]. The feature is the "Great Photo Wall" that occupies the first two pages of the book.  The Photo Wall reproduces in thumbnail form photos from the blog posts in a collage of color as you can see below.  Some of the photos get cut off in odd places decapitating some statues and people, but the full photos can be seen at the Post themselves.

In summary, I am happy with this trial run of Into Real Pages and I hope they continue to support Blogger for some time to come so that I can catch up with converting my existing posts into book form.

So what about the cost?

As with Blurb I wanted to produce my blog books in the 12" x 12" square, hardback format on high quality glossy paper.  The cost runs about $1.15 per page for the first 80 pages in that format.  Each additional page above the first 80 is $0.60.  Into Real Pages does offer discounts periodically--especially if you purchase more than one copy at a time.  As you would expect, there was a holiday discount offered and my savings on three copies of a 174-page book was a total of $102.34.  Each 174-page book came out to a net cost of $137.75 (with tax and shipping from Germany included), which works out to an actual cost of 77 cents per page.  The books are not cheap, but the quality is good and when viewed as a very long term investment in preserving family history, the cost is then "amortized" over many years and I think the books are worth the cost and effort.  I see no reason why minimal care of the books would not allow them to be enjoyed by generations of descendants.

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Readers might have noticed that there have been no Saturday Serendipity posts for the last couple of weeks.  That feature of Filiopietism Prism is now on an indefinite hiatus.  The time devoted to the reading and writing that went into each Saturday Serendipity post is being reallocated to a push to catch up with converting the accumulated posts on this blog into book form.

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Copyright 2020, John D. Tew

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