Well here I am three years after buying Zulu so what to do with the blog now that I am no longer the owner? Well one option is to print it out as a hardback book; I have just discovered that for a fairly modest fee, your blog can be printed into a book online, with just a couple of clicks. So for posterity, printing it as a book certainly sounds worthwhile.
Zulu's book preview
Admittedly the blog has not been updated much in the last year, but there are still a good 150 or so posts in the archive, many of which I have totally forgotton about. I actually think there is a major flaw in almost all blogging software, in that all but the last few posts get confined to the archives, so flicking through previous pages requires quite a lot of persistence and luck before chancing upon an interesting article.
I have in fact just realised that something I wrote about the Hotel Boat African Queen a couple of years ago has actually been published on their own website, following articles from the Mail, Mirror and Daily Telegraph. I a quite flattered and not intending to raise the copyright issues - it was just nice to read it again after this reminder. (Apologies, by the way, to anyone who has found this page while searching for Zulu Warrior and African Queen. Im afraid this may not be be what you expected!)
If the blog was a book, it would be so much easier to flick through the earlier entries and remember things like this, not to mention the advantages of having a permanent record of your writings, just in case the online copy should ever self-destruct.
There seem to be several online services which can print your blog with minimal effort – Sharedbook.com is one option – I have done a quick trial and found the results on screen to be excellent – and the cost likely to be about £50 for a full colour hardback printed book, which I don’t consider to be too expensive for such a wonderful memento. This service is US based, so postage will be additional, but there may well be a UK supplier.
My first Apple iPhoto book
I have already used Apple’s iPhoto to print a book of a recent holiday in Iceland and the results were fantastic – if you have an Apple computer and haven’t yet explored this option then I can thoroughly recommend it – you simply assemble some photos in iPhoto, select the option to make a book and choose a theme – spend as long as you want adding text, captions, automated maps and then re-arranging the pictures and pages before clicking to pay. The cost for about 70 pages containing 300 photos was about £60, not bad when considering the cost of printing 300 photos and sticking them into a 10 pound photo album. This book will last for ever, unlike some of my old photo albums which are really showing signs of their age. I was also delighted with the service – on the fifth day after ordering the book it was delivered, with a Holland postmark – so it must literally have been printed and despatched within a couple of days.
If a blog to book service is anything like as good as this, then I can’t wait to try it.
