Turn Your Blog Into a Book

Just like me, many of you have given up the daily writing of a journal in favor of journaling online.  Not that I journal for real online - I very rarely write about personal things such as anxiety.  Ok, so that's a lie.  Here lately, I've been writing about that a lot.  It's fetus induced.  I can't help it. 

But at least I don't write about stuff like I did in high school - Husband made me get my high school journals out the other night and GOOD GRIEF.  I really was high school stupid at one point.  As in monumentally stupid.  The good news is, I'm totally not now.  Phew.

Anyway, even though I now write online, I'm one of those people who still wants a paper copy just in case something happens to my online stuff - you know, like if Al Gore decides to pull the plug on the Internet he created.

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Random ADD Erin Thought:  When we evacuated for the last hurricane, I took clothes, a laundry basket full to the brim of journals and scrapbooks, and nothing else.  I blame Grandma Neff, who gave me my first journal when I was eight.  I do very few things well, but I've kept some kind of a journal almost without fail since then. I'm kind of obsessed. 

When I stand before the judgement bar in Heaven and The Lord asks me, "Erin, why didn't you have food storage?  Why didn't you read your scriptures more?  Why weren't you charitable?", I'll just plop my giant box of journals on the table and say, "Because I was too busy writing in my journal and being a record keeping person.  What do you have to say now? BAM!"  

I'm pretty sure The Lord and I will have a good laugh together and then he'll let me into Heaven.

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And now, back to our regularly scheduled program:

Last year, I found this site.

I went ahead and put two years of my blog into three different book volumes.  This is what the final product looks like.

While I was (and still am) thrilled to death with the books - they are beautiful - they weren't cheap.

So today, while browsing the site again, I found that they have an option to download a PDF of your blog for only $7.95.  I usually only do six months at a time due to how much I write, but I'm pretty sure you could download years and years of posts for the same price.

The PDF includes all the posts you choose and all of the pictures included in those posts (true, the pictures are pretty small - maybe 3"x3" - when printed out).  It can also include the comments made on those posts if you wish.

I downloaded mine and used a nice color printer to print them off.  They're just as pretty as the books, if just a tad less shiny.

While I plan to take the cheap route and three-hole punch mine to place in a $2.95 binder from Target, I suppose you could take it down to Kinkos and have them print and bind it for you.

Either way, it's about $60 cheaper than ordering the hardcover book. 

Bargain!