As Requested . . . A Look Inside My Most Recent Blog Book (September 9, 2021)

 

Following the most recent post about my blog-to-book efforts, Nancy, one of the long-time readers of this blog, commented that she was considering making books of her genealogy blog ( My Ancestors and Me).  She asked if I could show more of the inside of the book.  I am more than happy to do so and additional photos with explanations are presented here.

The headline photo above is of the so-called "Great Photo Wall" that appears to be a feature of IntoRealPages books and cannot be changed so far as I know.  The Wall is created by taking thumbnail photos of the pictures that accompany posts within the book and making a collage of them at the beginning of the book. 

There are basically two different ways to organize a blog-to-book using IntoRealPages.  For comparison purposes, interested readers should please open the blog post of December 20, 2020 here in order to see the important differences in the two organizational options.

In the book featured in the December 2020 post above, I used what is called a "Chapter Index" organizational format.  In this format each individual blog post is considered a "chapter" in the book.  As a result (and as illustrated in the referenced prior post), a "chapter page" is inserted before each and every blog post.  The chapter page merely repeats the title of the adjacent blog post itself and so it is not only redundant, it adds unnecessary pages to the book and thus to the cost of each book because cost is ultimately determined by the page count. 

The definite benefit of the Chapter Index format is that it produces a very nice, user-friendly index that provides the title of each individual post and the page number on which it begins (see the photo at the December 2020 post above).

While I believe the IntoRealPages blog-to-book is a quality hardback book that should last generations if treated with a modicum of care, the truth must be told that the books are NOT inexpensive.  But, if the time and effort that goes into creating such books for our posterity is added to the cost and then "amortized" over the time and generations that will be able to benefit from them, they really work out to be a reasonable cost.  Even so,  there is still no reason to add to the cost where it is not really required.  For that reason, I switched in the three latest volumes and produced them with what is called the "Month Index" format.  A picture of that style index is illustrated in the post of August 28, 2021 here.

The Month Index format organizes the blog posts in chronological order within each calendar year included in the book.  A calendar year page is inserted into the book in the same way as the Chapter Index, but only where necessary to distinguish blog posts in one specified year from posts in a subsequent year.  This means, of course, that there will be far fewer indexed pages inserted in the book and thus the cost of each book will be less. 

I will freely admit that the Chapter Index format is much more user friendly for the reader than the Month Index format.  However, after pondering the matter I decided that I preferred to go with cost savings now as opposed to user friendliness for descendants in the future.  

Why did I do this?  

I did this because I realized that far into the future of these books the reader would not be likely to search for specific blog posts using the Chapter Index unless and until he or she had become somewhat familiar with the titles and content of book and any particular blog post he or she had found interesting or important.  Someone opening a book with the Chapter Index for the first time in say 50 years would perhaps get some vague idea of what a post is about from the title, but for many they would not.  I think they will be more likely to just skim or browse through this "genealogy book one of their ancestors or relatives produced"--sort of like looking through an unindexed catalog of today.  IF such readers find things of interest or import to themselves, then they will dog-ear, bookmark, or otherwise create a way to easily locate the post(s) again. The same will be true of a book using the Month Index format and their browsing can be done in sections by year and then chronologically within the year.  The difference for today is that the cost of producing the book is lower by eliminating a redundant chapter page before each and every blog post in the book.

One last note about the overall book organizational format.  It is possible to do a book in a third "format" that I somehow did with one volume by mistake.  Volume 4 is the thinnest (and therefore least expensive) of the four IntoRealPages books I have produced.  In that first volume after the Chapter Index book, I attempted to eliminate the insertion of redundant chapter pages for every blog post.  I was successful in doing that, but I also inadvertently eliminated the user friendly index and thus the book became nothing but an unindexed chronological collection of the blog posts put into that volume.  The photo below illustrates how three blog posts appeared in that volume without any chapter insert and throughout the book neither was there any calendar year pages to indicate the beginning of a new year of posts.

Finally, I need to point out that the IntoRealPages blog-to-book is printed in what I believe is an unalterable three-column format.  The photos or other inserts in the original online blog post all appear in the book, but they are positioned to accommodate the three-column format; as a result your posts in the book will look different than that in the original online posts.  The paragraph separation and font size and position of photo captions will also be different–but not distastefully so.

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Copyright 2021, John D. Tew

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All photos by the author.

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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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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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