After 24 hours of stress, I am back on track. We decided to make my blog into a book. It sounds easy enough to do, but I was wrong. Blurb.com is a website that helps people put together books. You can choose all types of formats. I became familiar with Blurb when my friend Diane sent me a book of the photos I posted on Facebook. It was a wonderful gift, but I never realized how much work it was.
Blurb has a means by which you can upload your blog and place each page in book form. When it is uploaded, the software chooses where and how the text and photos should be displayed. Most of the time it doesn't work. Either the whole photo is cropped so it is hard to even recognize what it is or it is too small. The captions under the photos show up in the text of the story and not under the photo. As a result every single page has to be custom arranged. Some blog posts are long so they take up two or more pages. If it is two pages, then they should face each other. My husband, to help me out, worked on it for many many hours. I just don't have the patience for some things. He ended up with 194 pages, and it only got us through the end of May. He is a perfectionist so when it was ready, I knew it was good. I looked it over and didn't see any problems. We had a 30% off code for first time customers, so yesterday afternoon I uploaded the book. We were excited to have it finished. I used the code and got the percentage off. Although it was still pretty expensive, we felt it would be a family keepsake. That is when everything hit the fan. I did a preview, and I saw one spelling mistake after the other. Something had happened with the upload. I didn't preview or spell check after I sent it off figuring it was fine. Immediately I got on the computer and emailed them that the book was full of spelling mistakes. It substituted 'was' with 'us' and put extra letters in many places. They sent me a response and told me they would cancel my order even though is was already being printed. They would only do it one time and never again. I was relieved and began editing it again. I ran spell checker five times and went through it. I uploaded it again, which takes a long time. I purchased the book, but they wouldn't give me the discount because it wasn't my first book. When it came through, I noticed a couple more mistakes, like Santa Claus was changed to Santa 'Clause'. I don't even care, it's done and if I have to I will make corrections in the book when it comes. Below is the link to the book. It will take you to a page with prices and "preview". If you click on preview and full page, you can see the book.
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/3886800/defde04637a7507ca34bd583b7df9adf73dd94b8
We may do the next six months at a later time. Times heals all wounds, and we will be a lot smarter about everything. Now to enjoy this beautiful Friday and put the last 24 hours behind us.
*Note: The book was shipped sooner than they said, and I got an email stating that we would receive the 30% discount. The customer service from Blurb has been wonderful. They have been more than helpful.
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