Just a few words about my blurb book...

I've had several people question me about my blurb book so here is my attempt to answer those questions.

How did you make it?/How did you do that? I went to blurb.com and downloaded their Booksmart program for free. It is now on my desktop. I just opened up the program and got to work.... Well, truth be told, I got to work about 3 or 4 times before I actually succeeded. It was very, very overwhelming, confusing, frustrating, etc. in the beginning. But then my friend Gretchen posted her blurb book on her blog and I decided to do it no matter how hard it seemed. (Oh, and I called her and she gave me a pep talk. That helped, too.)

How long did it take you to make it? I worked like mad for an entire week....it took approximately 20-25 hours of staring at the computer screen and reminding myself to "just keep trying." The majority of my pictures had been uploaded at the incorrect resolution (for those of you who care, 300 pixels per inch is optimal for blurb books) so I spent A LOT of time going back and resizing my photos.....what a pain! What this means in plain English is that my pictures looked too grainy or "pixel-y" before I saved them the right way. But next time it should be easier (and faster) because I am now resizing my photos to the correct resolution when I post to my blog.

Your book was 112 pages. How many posts did you have? I started blogging in August so I had 5 months worth of posts. I had approximately 130 posts but I did not put every single one in my book (although if I had to guess, I'd say I probably used 90-95% of them). I had over 500 pictures on my blog and I probably used at least that many in my book. (I added a 6-page spread of pictures that Kim took of our family that I hadn't posted on my blog.)

A few more words....
I love my book. I can say this now that it is finished--it was worth every second/minute/hour that I spent in frustration to have this recorded. In hindsight, 20-25 hours doesn't seem like that much time. If I were to scrapbook and/or journal then I'm sure it would take longer. Much, much longer. And I couldn't do it for under $50 either. My plan is to make one of these books for each year. At the end of January I went ahead and slurped my January posts into the Booksmart program. It only took 2 hours. If I do this at the end of every month, then it certainly won't be such an overwhelming project. I had to remind myself that when I started blogging it seemed really hard and time-consuming but I have learned a lot in the short time that I've been blogging and it doesn't seem hard anymore. It was the same with the blurb book.

Good luck to anyone who wants to try it! Call me if you need a pep talk. :)


***edited to add***
On my first attempt, I "slurped" my entire blog all at once....very overwhelming (and it took FOREVER) because Booksmart automatically puts one picture on each page. I had over 500 pages! Way too complicated to go back and fix all that! So what I ended up doing was "slurping" a few blog posts at a time. It was much more manageable for me that way.

(If the above paragraph makes no sense to you then please disregard. I added it to help some who have actually tried to do the blurb thing and then gave up because it seemed too hard.)