Mission Accomplished -- Capturing Blog Posts In Permanent Book Form (August 28, 2021)

 

My eight-month long hiatus from blogging is now coming to an end and I am slowly going to get back to posting again.  The task I set for myself of capturing my 750+ blog posts into book form for more permanent preservation is finally accomplished.  As the photos above illustrate, I now have six hard-bound volumes of  nearly a decade of blog posts.  The last four volumes (shown in the top photo) have been produced using the web-based application IntoRealPages.

I first blogged about my blog-to-book efforts back on February 20, 2015 when I produced the first volume of the book version of my blog using an application called Blurb. That post, "Want To Preserve All Your Genealogy Blog Efforts? Better book it!," can be viewed in its entirety here.

As I wrote in that first post, I became concerned that a blog really exists only as digital code stored in the cloud or as stored on one's computer and backup media.  The problem is that with the rush of technology changes, concerns about hacker attacks, and other factors beyond our personal control, there is no guarantee that the content so painstakingly created today will be available for future generations to access easily.  Who knows what technology will be available to our great, great, grandchildren and whether the content in the cloud today will exist there then–and if so whether tomorrow's technology will be able to access the content?  How many today can listen to 8-track tapes found in the attic? Who is able to get stored content off a Zip drive discovered in the dark recesses of an old desk drawer? 

Hard copy books on paper are "low-tech" and inexpensive.  With reasonable care they have proven to be remarkably enduring and accessible for hundreds of years.  For these reasons I believe a book version of a genealogy/family history blog is the best way to preserve the content and efforts of today's blogger.

My blog-to-book project has not produced a uniform collection of volumes of my blog.  So far two different book publishers have been used and a close look at the six volumes reveals they differ from each other in a variety of ways.  I have had to learn the features of each of the blog-to-book applications and how to use them.  As with all applications, there is much to learn and use over time finds much to discover that was previously unknown.  For example, the very first volume using Blurb resulted in a dust jacket cover over a solid black binding.  If the dust jacket is lost or destroyed, then there is nothing on the book's binding to indicate what it is–one has to open the book to discover its contents and purpose.  By the time of Volume 2, I learned to use the application to do away with a dust jacket.  I was able to integrate the cover art and text into the book binding itself.

A close examination of the spines of the six volumes in the photo immediately above, reveals that I had to learn how to control the spine text.  Volume 3, the blue book and the first one to use IntoRealPages, indicates that I failed to get the volume number on the spine of that book.  I recovered in the next three volumes using IntoRealPages, but the placement of the volume number is not uniform.  Also, my name as author appears on only three of the volume spines.  This illustrates that until one spends time with a blog-to-book application and is able to master most or all of its features and variations, the best approach is to adopt the view that "variety is the spice of creating a blog-to-book collection."  😊

When Blurb no longer supported Google Blogger, I was forced to find another blog-to-book publisher.  After deciding on IntoRealPages as the new publisher, I posted about the experience on December 20, 2020.  "IntoRealPages–A New Blog-to-Book Producer" can be viewed in its entirety here.  In that post I discussed some pros and cons about the new publisher and mentioned the cost for the book.  Since that review of IntoRealPages I have produced three more volumes and come to learn more about the application and its features.  The "Great Photo Wall" feature is still an imposed attribute of a book so far as I can tell, but is has grown on me even as it adds to the cost of the book.  On the other hand, I have found a balance between making the books more user friendly and decreasing the cost of the books.

In the first volume using IntoRealPages, I mentioned how I liked the "Chapter Index" organization of the book.  That index listed the title and date of each individual blog post and provided the page on which the post started.  [See the photos in the December 20, 2020 post.] This was a great improvement over Blurb, which had no such feature when I used it, but it came at a significant cost increase for the book.  As illustrated in my post of December 20, 2020, organizing each blog post as a "chapter" imposed the addition of a chapter page between each individual post.  Since the cost of a book is based on a per page price, each additional page adds to the overall cost.  Therefore, on the last three volumes I found and used an organizational feature that made the book a little less user friendly, but resulted in cost saving.

Instead of using a chapter index that treated each post as a chapter, I used a "Month Index."  The Month Index organizes all the posts chronologically and divides them up by month instead of by individual post date.  This means that the Month Index will tell the reader the page number where all the posts for a given month and year begin and then the individual posts will be sequential by date within that month with no added chapter page for each post.  This eliminates many redundant chapter pages, but now makes it much more difficult to find an individual blog post quickly by title.  After pondering it, I decided that because the ultimate purpose of the blog-to-book project is to preserve the posts for my descendants into the distant future, the likelihood is that great grandchildren and beyond will not be deterred by an index that does not state where each titled post begins.  If they have an interest at all it will be in browsing through the volumes in chronological order and if a particular post is of importance to them, they will mark or note it in some way to make finding it again easier.  I voted for saving costs now in actual production of the books over user friendliness for descendants.  Others using IntoRealPages might decide to vote the other way. 😊

I like IntoRealPages better than I did Blurb and I hope to use it for all future blog-to-book projects.  If you are looking to preserve your blog for the long run, I recommend IntoRealPages.  The cost is well worth it to pass on to future generations all your family history research, photos, documents, etc.

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Photos by the author.

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Copyright 2021, John D. Tew

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