Before I drop what looks to be $100 I wanted to get more info. What was your opinion of the finished product? Does it include stills of your videos? When you upload the blog to pdf does it include all your photos or do you have to upload them again? Is there any way to covert your blog to a pdf and have it printed by another company? Any more tips if you were to do it over? Thanks
Reply to this I can't speak to the Blog to Book option on Travelblog, but we created a large coffee table book of our blog using Blurb.com. The quality is excellent and they have lots of different options. The layout software is pretty easy to use as well. We're very happy with how our book turned out. Our book is 368 pages with approximately 800 photos. We went with Blurb because most self-publishing websites don't allow for books that large. It cost us about $200 for our book, but it makes a great keepsake that we can share with our friends and family.
Reply to this We were wondering about this option as well but as we have only started our travels haven't looked into it too much.
AfricaBound, would you happen to have any pictures of the finished product itself? are the pages in the book a type of glossypage? and is the cover a hard or soft cover?
Reply to this We don't have any photos of our book, but there are lots of examples to browse on the Blurb website (although it's hard to get an idea of the look and feel of the final product - we crossed our fingers when we ordered ours). Our book is hard cover with glossy dust jacket 13" x 11" landscape. To us, it's very close to the same quality that you'd find for large coffee table books in a book store. We're quite happy with the results. Keep in mind that this is our first attempt at self-publishing, but we plan to do another one when we return from our next trip.
Reply to this oh that sounds perfect. We would be looking for something along the lines of a 'traditional' coffee table book that you would find in stores. I haven't checked out the site too much yet but plan on doing so in the near future. Is it fully customizable for each page or do they have basic layouts (I know I should just go and check out the site lol)
Kristy
Reply to this Yes I believe it is fully customizable, but we just used the standard layouts, there are quite a few to choose from.
It took us about 2 months (evenings and weekends) to put the book together, using the text from our blog and photos etc. We had a good laugh at proof reading all of our blogs. The spell checker that they have on the blog isn't very good, it didn't recognize several of the places we visited.
Reply to this I've had three done and can't speak highly enough of them. Two hardback, one paper and both are cool. Sturdy, good quality pics and I'd recommend them highly.
Reply to this i've done it 2 times for 2 of our longer trips that we travel-blogged and plan on doing it again for this year's 2 month trip.
if i remember correctly i had to upload the photos again (need high res photos for the nicer looking book). but if you keep all the original photos organized it should not take too long.
the good thing is that you get a well formatted, easy to produce book because most of the work is already done when you did your original blog. it took me only a couple of hours to produce a book out of 6-7 blogs. with most of the effort spent in swapping the photo locations to get the right ones to be enlarged (as photo sizes are fixed depending on their order in the book)
the final prodct is a sturdy hardback book, easy to read, thick paper. the photo resolution in not the same as regular print. booktakes about 1/4 of the space on the shelf relative to a regular album
bottom line: easy to produce, high quality book, photo print resolution could be better
Reply to this I have also used the Blurb site, and it was great. It definitely surpassed my expectations. It is expensive though, especially if you choose a larger size. But you do have plenty of options, which was great, and the quality was fantastic.
Reply to this Just found this thread, which is good as I'm in the process of putting together a book of our year long RTW travels using Blurb's Booksmart software. Glad they're getting good reviews.
I'm slowly getting it all together and formatted, I'm only getting a standard portrait book though to save on costs. it's currently running at 242 pages though I think I'm going to shove a load more photos in it!
Most of the formatting is done and it looks like it's going to look really good... only 70,000 words to proof read first though before it goes to print.... 😊
Reply to this We recently received our blog to book from Drop the World and love it. We put it together two years ago and never finalized it so it would go to print. I wanted to make some changes to the formatting that the system would not allow. I kept being told that if I waited two months, or six months, or just a little longer that the system would be able to do what I wanted. After waiting over two years I finally said to heck with it and published it. We wanted to share it with our families over the holidays. It was a big hit.
The formatting that was available did not bother me the way I thought it might. I am happy with the finished product and I am glad I went ahead with it.
Again, they are saying they will offer more formatting selections soon--- who knows if that is true but I would not wait if you are interested in this. I believe you will be happy with their product.
We selected the hard back and large photos. It is grand!
Reply to this Hi There
We also used the blog to book option and are happy with results. It's not cheap but a really nice memory and we regularly look at it 😊. We used the soft cover option and the cover picture did not come out as expected but inside the book, the pictures look great. If I would do it again, I would not put a picture on the cover and probably go for a hard cover.
The other thing I was a bit annoyed with is that the posting option to the UK was not really clear, I think I chose something called UPS standard and assumed it would be tracked. When my books did not arrive for a while (3 weeks or so), I contacted them and they said that this is not the tracked and there is nothing they can do. Since then, they have made a change to their website though and it now states that this is standard post and not tracked.
Cheers Em&Frankie
Reply to this I have just had my blog converted to a fabulous book, Drop the world have been fantastic. It was a lot of work to edit the pages down from 900 to 400, but worth the time.
It is best to have all the photos full sized in one file as you edit as the ones uploaded to TB are too small, check as you go through the chapters that the photos are ok with a little green tick, if it shows red tick it needs to be uploaded again in a fuller size.
I editied so much waffling unnecessary text, making sure the pages looked balanced and spaced out correctly. All the TB codes had gone so that was great. But I noticed millions of ; between words which I had not put in but was all through the blogs which must have happened when the layout was changed.
Any problems Brian replys to emails promptly, and delivery to the UK was 5 days.
The only thing I can say that is negative is that my photos which were very orange and red in colours including skin tones look quite saturated printed in the book, but this is only on a few of them. The photo and print quality is wonderful.
I am thrilled with the final result. It looks so impressive and I am very proud of my journey, the travelblog and now the book. Thank you everyone concerned. Claire Hall X
Reply to this Soul cultivator,
It sounds like your experience was a good as ours. We agree that Brian responds quickly to email questions and is extremely helpful. Our delivery to the US was very quick also.
We will get additional volumes in the future.
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