I have ordered the rough draft copy of my blog book. It is 244 pages so I didn't want to edit it on the computer. I prefer to have a hard copy to edit. I am excited to get it and see how I like it. Once I get it edited I will make it available to the public if anyone wants a copy. It will not be cheap, unfortunately. But I made it a nice book that will serve as a record of this life changing year for our family.
I decided to use Blurb and then just put my book in their bookstore. When I first slurped my blog over to their site it gave me an error message that said, and here I quote: "Whoa! That's some blog you've got there! Unfortunately Blurb can only publish a maximum of 440 pages one book." Then it asked me if I wanted to continue with what it could fit from my blog or if I wanted to start over.
I thought that was a funny message. Kudos to whoever wrote the programing on that. So I had to whittle down my blog to fit. It was easy to take out some posts about So You Think You Can Dance parties etc... It was harder to decide whether or not to leave in the doctrinal posts that answered questions about Mormonism. I don't feel my family needs the information because they either know or are being taught the doctrine. Still I did share some personal stories in some of those posts that I thought I might want in my family history.
For now I have taken those posts out. I was trying to take out everything non-essential to keep costs down. I was afraid the book would cost me $200 because it was so long and has lots of color photos. In the end, this first draft in paperback ran me about $60. I was excited to see it was so inexpensive. But it is still more than I would normally ever pay for a regular book.
So I am not sure how interested people will be in paying for a copy of this book but I am excited to have the first version of it on its way to me. It has been an emotional journey putting it together and my heart is ready to hand it off to someone else to read through it and edit it. I hope to have it edited and in final form before the end of the year. I'll let you know when it is finished.
