Volume One Has Landed

How do you, dear reader, feel about vanity publishing? One reads lots of stories about publishers rejecting now-famous books: Perhaps the most famous being JK Rowling's original manuscript for Harry Potter being turned down by nine publishers before Bloomsbury bought it in 1996. But lots of frustrated writers who have been turned down by publishers, resort to self-publishing as a way to get their books 'out there'. Anyway, I digress.

I must confess to having dallied in a spot of vanity publishing. I didn't send my 'manuscript' to a single publisher or agent, I just went to visit Blurb.com, where one can turn one's blog into a book. They have a very natty system which 'slurps' the words and pictures from one's blog straight into a book layout, thereby cutting out a lot of hard graft. However, there was still a lot of editing to do.

I decided a couple of years ago that I wanted to turn the Bloggy Bits into books, so the kids would have something 'solid' to look at in the future. I know I'd absolutely love to have had that sort of thing written by my parents, or even my grandparents. It was Suzy at Mind Spillage who first alerted me to the service offered by Blurb - thanks Suzy - x. She has produced several volumes of books herself, and jolly professional they look too.

After some consideration, I felt a logical way to go would be to produce a book for every year of the Bloggy Bits, so 2007 was my immediate task. I slurped, but some of the pictures weren't the right size and/or resolution for the book, so I had to do quite a bit of resizing, etc. on those. I decided I wanted to change the font for the text, and that took ages to change. Blurb has now updated their software so one can create a template for future use, which means you don't have to do things like laboriously go through it altering fonts. It is quite a lengthy process, but I have to confess I did kind of enjoy it.

You can make your books public or private at Blurb. If you decide to go public, other people can buy your books; however, mine is an essentially family concern, so I chose the private option. And as nobody other than family and close friends will ever see the book(s) I decided to add some personal pictures that I'd never put on the blog. I'm really pleased with the way those have come out, and think it gives the book a more interesting perspective. I simply scanned old photographs on our printer and inserted them into the book myself.

I went for the hardback book option, but in hindsight, I'm not sure it was the right choice. I might not choose the same for later editions. I really really dislike the design on the paper cover - the 'guidelines' Blurb gave were not accurate, leaving the main 'square' decidedly not central. And that irritates me. I quite liked being able to put little bits on the fly leaves though. I ordered three copies of the book - one each for the kids, and one for my Mum. No.1 has already leafed through it, smirking as she went. No.2 couldn't have been less interested, but I hope one day he will be pleased to have it.

Now I am in the process of editing Volume 2 - 2008: One of the most stressful years in my entire life. I have learned from the first volume to do better proof-reading - there are mistooks. I have learned to check and double check things like borders on images (in Volume 1 some pictures have borders, and some don't). Hopefully Volume 2 will be better. I'm really pleased with the quality of the printing and the paper used for the pages, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend Blurb to anyone thinking of making either a Blog Book or perhaps a collection of their photographs, or other things they'd like to remember.

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