52 Ancestors: Preservation - Blog Books

A few months ago I shared that I wanted to get back to publishing my blog into books.  In 2011 I published a book using blurb.com of my first year's blog posts to give to my Mom as a Christmas gift, which she seemed to really love.  When we next were together, we had such fun looking through the book and talking about her family.

I'm the little one in the front.

It was fun to do and since she seemed to enjoy it, I made another one in 2012.

Four generations of women in my family

2x great grandmother, great grandmother, grandmother, 3x great grandmother

And then it happened.  In May, 2013 Mom passed away and when the holidays approached that year, I just couldn't face making another book since it felt like there was no one to gift it to.  So I took a pass.

And that pass lasted for eight more years until just a few months ago when it occurred to me that I needed to preserve my blog in different ways.  Maybe, just maybe, long after I'm gone a descendant will come across it and learn more about those ancestors who came before them.  So it was time to get serious and get those years documented in print form.

Naturally, my first stop was blurb.com since I'd had such success with it before.  Unfortunately, blurb had discontinued the service of "slurping" a blog which would mean I'd have to figure out another way.  A blogging friend, Wendy, commented that one way to do it would be to cut and paste.  Duh, why hadn't I thought of that?  So I started to explore that option.  After a lot of cutting and a lot of pasting, I was close to the finish line when I realized that for a 130 page soft cover book, the cost was going to be $82.  Not bad for one but I had nine books to make so that was looking to be a hefty price tag.

Come on, there had to be another option.  And then another blogging friend, Amy, said that she prints her blog books using lulu.com so I explored that option and sure enough, the same book in hard cover would be $27.  SCORE!  So off I went.....

The books would be slightly larger and I'd have to change the cover a bit and it was fun to find a special photo to put on the covers.  It wasn't long before I had my first two books in hand - the end of 2012 and all of 2013 in two different books.  I was thrilled!

Left - Me drying a bowl, Right - my great grandfather, Herman Levy

I was hooked!  Sure it was labor intensive but by putting it in Word I was able to re-format and size things before I converted into a pdf.  Lulu was fairly easy to use and I got it down to a routine.  And then when I got an e-mail from Lulu and realized I could take advantage of their discounts at certain times, I got even more enthused.  It wasn't long before the 2014 book was complete!

Santa Cruz High School Graduating class, 1890, Bertha Schwartz (great grandmother) standing on right

And on it went until I completed through 2020.  What a collection I have!

So that's how I've preserved my blog - I am so happy I finally took the plunge and completed it.  Next up, publishing all of the letters my dad wrote to his parents and the pictures he took when he was in the Army in 1945-1946.  Working on a title for that now.......