My First Blog Book...Coming Soon

As my readers know, last February I participated in the Family History Writing Challenge hosted by The Armchair Genealogist. I reflect on that month with fondness. I have also decided to blog my family history stories during the challenge for 2016.

Blogging was the perfect way to share the stories I had collected of my ancestors. The cousins loved it and stories initiated several fun cousin "talks."

This past week, I decided to try out blog2print, an online service that will print your blog posts into book form. I loved how easy it was!

After adding a title and my name as author (thanks to a fellow blogger that reminded me to add my own name!), I just fixed the little calendar to slurp up blog posts only written in February 2015. In this way, I was able to only print the blog posts that had to do with the family's history and not the "how to genealogy" posts I had written.

It was just luck that all the posts I wanted printed were in order chronologically. If I had thrown in a how-to blog within that month, I don't think blog2print would have allowed me to edit it out.

In this way, blog2print is super easy for the beginner and requires no editing. However, if you would like or need to edit, this is likely not the service for you.

Because I have added several pictures to my blog posts, I wanted the full color interior pages. You can request black and white only which is a bit cheaper. The pictures are placed on the page for you, but I felt the site did a great job in placement.

You can also write a dedication page for the front of your book. My favorite item was the Table of Contents. It made the book seem more "professional."

I ordered a soft cover book with 24 pages for about $17.00. I could have ordered a hard cover for $23.00.

Customers can order as many copies as they wish for the same amount, but it seems you need to order them all at once. I had not mentioned anything to my family members about publishing, so if they want a copy in the future I will have to upload to the site again. Some forward thinking would have allowed me to contact relatives that might have wanted to place an order before I hit "create my book."

Though I have yet to try Blurb.com, I have heard great things about their service too. Blurb allows editing options that blog2print does not. I believe their prices are a bit lower as well. I will likely choose Blurb to print my next book, just to see the difference in print quality.

Screenshot of a page created by blog2print

My book should arrive sometime around the 17th of September and I am super excited to see it! In the meantime, I have taken a screenshot of one of the pages. I will also be writing more on how to use this service and other blog to book services in an upcoming article for the RootsBid blog, so stay tuned!