Been writing a blog for a few years? If so, then you've actually written a decent sized book. Heck, probably two or three books with photos and illustrations. You spent all that time documenting whatever it was you were documenting, so why not have a physical copy of it all? Someday it could all go *poof* and disappear into the cloud anyway.
I recently looked into how hard would it be to transfer this blog into a bound, hardcover book, how much it would cost, and how difficult it would be. To my surprise, not very hard or even costly at all. For reference, this blog -every post from 2005 to the present- weighed in at 340 pages at US Trade size (6" x 9"). The cost of a nice hardcover of this, color cover, black and white interior is a whopping $20. ($24 shipped). For full-color, the price is $84.00 ($88 shipped). To make it an 8.5 x 10.75 larger book, add about $1 to those prices. Paperbacks (in a host of different sizes) are on average about $10 to $20 less.
First things first. Me, I love binding my own books, but I know everyone else isn't going to break out the industrial paper cutter and hot glue to do that, so fortunately there's a much easier way to go about it.
My handy little guide that follows requires a few things:
1. That you're using WordPress to power your blog. Blogger sites can possibly be ported to a press-format, but not using the exact instructions here.
2. A copy of Microsoft Word, or similar word processing application that can output the .doc format. Don't have MS Word? No problem- you can also use freeware, IE: OpenOffice. (Sorry, MS Word Pad, notepad or the Text app in OSX won't cut it as you'll need the page formatting options of an actual .doc file. Also, if you have a lot of images, beware that OpenOffice will take some time to download them all into your document.)
3. Access to your blog template, and the ability to edit the files there from your wordpress admin panel. (If your site template files can't be edited, you'll need to set them to writable permissions using FTP access- or just ask the site admin to do it.)
You'll want to start at what seems like the last step -deciding on a format and size- because this will determine everything from the price, to how you'll actually set up your blog for press. So head over to lulu.com and browse their publish/books section. There you can pick the size, binding type, paper, etc. that suits you, and best of all, download a pre-formatted template in .doc format. This eliminates a lot of guesswork as to how the finished document will actually print.
So click the get started links and choose your size/style/binding type. Thereafter, you'll be asked to choose to keep this book private, or make it public to sell on the site's marketplace. Chances are, since we're talking a blog, you'll want to keep it private. Fill in the working title, Author, etc. Don't fret over these as the site is very aware that you'll likely just be testing the waters at first, so nothing is set in stone. Later when you're really down to brass tacks, you can change every aspect of your book before you commit to print it.
Continue until you get to the formatting section, where you should see a link to download a template. Download, unzip and open with a .doc compatible word processor. This will be the page size of your chosen format.
Now to the fun stuff- getting your posts -images/formatting/and all- out of your blog on onto the printed page. The first problem you'll encounter right away, is that blogs are kept in reverse order. You'll want a printed book with the posts in proper order. Copy-pasting every single blog post individually and reordering them would be a gargantuan task. Luckily, there's a much easier way. Since your entire blog is nothing but a database being called up and displayed as needed, you simply need to tell the database to display the posts in chronological order. If you're using WordPress, then this is easy.
Login to your wp-admin the same as if you were posting, only go to Appearance/Editor. Open the template file called Main Index Template. This file needs to be writable on your FTP server where it's stored (if you're using WordPress on a WP-hosted domain then it should be writable by default.) Look for the line of php code that grabs the posts. It should look something like this:
< ?php if (have_posts()) : ?> < ?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
You'll want to first COPY this, and paste it into a text file. (Be VERY careful to select only the correct code and containing brackets!) Save it so you have it to put back when you're finished, otherwise your blog will remain in chronological order with your oldest posts first. Replace the line with:
< ?php $posts=query_posts($query_string . '&order=asc');
if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
Save the file. (Make sure you've backed up the original line first!! Keep in mind your original may not be exactly the same code as my example above, otherwise you could use it. ) Now when you view your blog you'll see the very first posts displayed first, all the way up to your most recent posts last. This format sucks for blogs, but is essential for a book which of course reads this way. You can see how this little snippet of code saves a ton of work getting your blog posts in the correct order.
Now that you've done this, you can go to Settings/Reading and update the number of blog posts shown on each page. (Say 50 at a time rather than the default 10). Keep in mind, if you're going to display a very large number of posts at once, the load time on your pages is going to go up tremendously, so this is a temp setting to expedite copying the posts in large blocks. Make sure your posts are set to full text, not summary.
From here, the process is simple. View your blog, and click just before the title of the first post at the top of the page. Then scroll to the bottom of the page. Hold shift, and click right after the last line of the last post. Be careful that the sidebar or any other elements other than strictly your posts aren't selected. (If you have some really odd theme that won't allow this, then you may want to temporarily switch to the generic default theme. Right click and 'COPY' (Or command-c).
If you've used a huge amount of overly-large images on your blog posts, then viewing the posts 50 at a time may overwhelm the clipboard. Simply display fewer number of posts until you get it right.
Put your cursor in the open Word template, and paste. For now, don't worry about formatting and such, just keep viewing the next page on your blog, copy the posts, and keep pasting them after the last set of posts in your word documents until you have the whole blog in the document. (Save the word file often during this process just in case!)
When you've done this, restore your blog to normal settings (reinstate the original post php code, and set the displayed posts numbers back as it was).
Now you can concentrate on formatting your book. Scroll through and see if you have any major issues. Images often can show up sized far larger than the page margins. Generally you can grab the edges and re-size them, taking care to keep within the margins of the printed page. (Your blog's text should conform to this.) If you've used a LOT of custom image placement on your blog, then you may have your work cut out for you in wrangling the images back into place. If you've used the general 'in line with text' format of most of your images, then it should go pretty smoothly.
Helpful hint #1: in Word 2007: Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Word Options. Click Advanced, and then click to select the Show text boundaries check box under Show document content. This will show you the printable margins on each page.
Helpful hint #2: Use Insert/page-break to push posts onto new pages, rather than hitting the return key multiple times. You can also insert blank pages at the start of the document to create title pages.
Once everything is to your liking, register a free account at lulu.com, and upload your completed word file to your book project. The word document for this blog was 14MB on upload, so it took a little while to upload even using a fast broadband connection. Once uploaded, lulu.com has automatic tools on their site to reformat the document as a .pdf and ready it for one-click publishing. You can then preview the entire book as it will look published.
You'll want a nice looking cover of course. Lulu.com's cover designer makes this a breeze. Upload some images and add them to one of the templates, or use your own images/art to design your own look from scratch. You can even place some blurb text on the back cover. Lulu is really cool about giving you the option of marking your book with their logo or not; for more personal books like this you'll probably not want it marred with such labeling.
When you've got everything as you like it, you can click to 'publish' the book, and order your own copy(s) of it. One really nice thing about lulu is they allow you to very easily revise the same project. Therefore you can create your book, order a cheaper paperback black and white (interior) copy of it, and see how it looks when it's hot in your hands. Then revise anything you don't like and order the more expensive hardbound full-color copy. This process makes it very easy to have a really nice bound printed copy of all this stuff you've spent so much time "putting on the cloud".
