The web-based self-publishing effort delivers a more highly-polished route to micropublishers. But it doesn't offer a route to broader markets beyond its own web store.If you've ever wanted to produce a book of your own, web-based publishing-on-demand services have lowered the threshold to achieving that dream. And
Blurb is now making it even simpler to get your words and images preserved for posterity in hardcopy.
The latest release of the company's book layout software, BookSmart 1.9.2, provides a variety of layout templates, and pre-fabricated graphical elements for those who want them. A single copy of a book can be produced for as little as $12.99. And, perhaps most ironically, Blurb even includes a feature for turning your blog into a book. That's right--pushbutton papercasting of your blogged content from Blogger, Wordpress, LiveJournal, TypePad, and OurStory.
The software's Web 2.0 savvy doesn't end there. BookSmart can also grab your images off of the photo-sharing sites Flickr, Picasa, and SmugMug, as well as allowing you to pull in contributions from others through the Blurb site itself.
For first-time authors, BookSmart offers a helping hand throughout the assembly of content into a book. You can also "Wing It", as the interface puts it, by clicking the "Start Book Now" button, and plow right through on your own, dragging and dropping images and pasting text onto pages.
If just getting your book into hardcover or trade paperback form, Blurb does that just fine. And you can also sell your books through Blurb's Web store. But Blurb doesn't offer a route to the major markets for online book sales--unlike Lulu.com, Blurb doesn't offer authors a route to an ISBN number, which puts books into global book industry databases and makes it possible (but not necessarily easy) to sell through booksellers like Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
If you don't have aspirations to be a best-selling author, and don't want to set up your book as a production-quality PDF to do it, BookSmart is a good way to get there, though the price of books can quickly climb up into the $40 to $50 range for individual books over 160 pages. Volume discounts kick in at 10% for over 10 copies, and 15% for over 200, but that still puts the pricetag for smaller publishing runs well in the range that puts the vanity in "vanity press."
