making some more blog books

i have no idea why i suddenly decided to start working on this project again. i had about 42 different projects going this weekend. but why not add starting a blog book to the list, right? because that's an easy enough thing to do. NOT.

 

the blog book. it's a think of beauty, once it's done and sitting on my bookshelf. but the process of making one of these books? it can be frustrating and time consuming. i'm sure it can be easy and simple for some people. just never for me. i decided to start with 2009, and then i will do 2008 afterwards. my blog is HUGE now, so i only pull up about 3 months at a time. once i work on that, and finetune it, it usually cuts the number of pages way down. by at least a third, if not more. then i pull up another few months. i had 154 pages for just the first 3 months, and after working on it, it's down to 92 pages already.

but this time, when blurb went to slurp my blog, it slurped it all up wonky.  slurping is the term blurb uses for it sucking up your blog info and spitting it into the book program. cute, right? well, this time it added in a bunch of symbols and numbers all throughout my posts. EVERYWHERE. i was so bugged, i can't even tell you. i put in a message to their customer service helpers. and i was told that they really didn't know why it was doing that, but that i could "find and replace" what shouldn't be there. so i sat down and really studied the wonky parts, and determined what it was. just like everywhere that i saw "&#quot;" there should have been a quotation mark. meaning of course, that that wonky code was on both sides of whatever i was quoting. lol! there was also a 6 digit mix of symbols and numbers wherever a comma was. and a 5 digit mix of symbols and numbers where a lot of the spaces should be. luckily, the "find and replace" feature works easily. and it will take care and fix the entire book at once. for 3 months, it fixed over 2100 wonky codes in a matter of seconds. but still a pain.

anyways, i have 3 months of my blog book all edited and fixed to my liking. not bad, considering that was just a day and a half of working on it here and there. i'll share more once it's done. but in the meantime, you can check out THIS POST, ANOTHER POST, and THAT POST for more info on how i made the books and some Q&A's about the process.

Comments

[Shannon R.]

We have been doing blog books for the past 4 years and I love them. Fortunately for me, my husband does all of the editing on them. But I know that it can take him a couple of weeks to get it just how he likes it.

[Cheryl Wolfe]

I need to try this. I "sort of" did a Project 365 blog last year and I'd like to get it printed up ... nevermind that I didn't come close to 365 photos. :)

[Deana]

OMG... thank you! I slurped my blog from my 2008 posts last year with no problem. This January when I went to slurp all of 2009, I ended up with all the same wonky problems you did. After taking way too long attempting to edit the pages one by one... I just gave up after only about 20 pages & decided I may never have any blog books again if it was going to be that big of a hassle to edit.

I will go back & try your solution. There may be hope after all! :-)

Hugs...

[Mustangkayla]

I was wanting to do this. Thanks for the info!

[Wilnaf]

this is SO FREAKING COOL Laura... i am so doing this + THE COOL thing is that blurb is now for BLOGGER TOO!
yay!
thanks a ton for sharing.
wilna

[Krista Lund]

you inspired me to get started on my blog book. i slurped yesterday and b/c i resize my images for the web i will need to replace all my images! UGH! i quit booksmart and am brainstorming another way to do it. maybe use digital scrapbook templates???

[Carla]

I think that is really cool!

[Sandi N.]

Laura

Good luck finding a fix. I hope it is finished soon.

Sandi N.

[Sasha Farina]

uh no... it's gonna be a pain to find and replace everything from the amount of pages! good luck Laura.

[Megan Hoeppner]

Love this idea, Laura. And I love that you take the time to do it. So much time goes into blogging. It only makes sense to turn that work into a tangible item that you can keep long after your internet real estate is gone. I'm definitely going to put this on my to-do list. Thanks for the inspiration! :)

[Sara Rossi]

I reallllly want to try this but like you said--I have so many other things I want to do! Gotta find some time to try this! So cool that you're doing this!

[Rozette]

I love this idea but where do you go to make the blog book?