Fortunately, there are a couple services that will let blog owners print a book from the material and pictures hosted on blogs.

Blog2Print

One site is called Blog2Print which uses your blog login information to access your blog posts and pictures.  You can then organize the blog posts, pictures, etc. and create your book.

I’m not a fan of letting other websites have access to login information from different accounts, so my suggestion is to change your blog password before and then after you use the service.

Pricing for Blog2Print is about what you’d expect for self-created picture book.  If your blog has hundreds and hundreds of posts that you think will probably fill up a number of printed books at large cost, you could try their feature of priting to a PDF.  You could then take the PDF and have it printed somewhere else.

Blog2Print Website

Blurb BookSmart

With BookSmart by Blurb you download software to your computer that helps you organize the information from you blog.  You can then create your book.  Pricing is pretty good with this option, but you will need to install the software on your computer.

If you have a lot of posts which would equate to a lot of pages which in turn would mean more costly a book, try creating your book with the Black and White option.  The prices are much lower compared to the color books.  Save color for your printed photos if you’re planning to use your blog and print it as a journal.

BookSmart really does provide a rather wonderful selection of book types and pricing options which makes their service quite competitive.

Blurb Website

Other Book Printing Websites

There are other websites that you can use to print books but that don’t have the integration to pull information from your blog in an integrated and easy way (that we could find at least):

Lulu (a great service)

Lulu is a major printer/publisher.  If you have your book ready, Lulu can print your book, allow you to sell it from their or your own website.  Another great thing about Lulu is that you can start by purchasing just one copy of your book, but if you want more copies later, they can print it up.  It’s print on demand.

Lulu Website

MyPublisher

MyPublisher is used often for photo books.  You can receive discounts for MyPublisher by searching for MyPublisher Coupons on the Internet.  If you have a Costco membership, you might be able to get a discount as well (at least you could in the past from the Costco website).

MyPublisher Website

BookSurge by Amazon

BookSurge is similar to Lulu but integrates very well with Amazon.com if you are looking to sell your book/journal online (maybe you’re a movie star and lots of people want to read it or something).

BookSurge Website

No matter which option you choose, be selective of the types of posts you put into your book.  If your blog features more pictures of your cat than it does of you or your family, your family might not get as big of a kick out of reading the book.  So, keep the content interesting and original, and you’ll have a great book!

We stumbled upon another great (and free) website that lets you preserve the list of books that you’ve read. The site is called Shelfari and lets you include a “bookshelf” of the literary works you’ve enjoyed reading, that you own, or that you want to read in the future and include the bookshelf right on your own website (if you so desire).

There are a variety of bookshelf styles that you can choose from. The bookshelves are interactive (meaning, visitors can scroll through the list of books you’ve placed on the shelf).

The service is free and will let you, if you choose, to connect with your friends to share info about your favorite reads.

How to use for Family History – Take advantage of the option to write a review of the books you’ve read. Wouldn’t you like to know what your ancestors thought about the material they read? You might feel lucky that you at least know what books some of your ancestors enjoyed let alone what they really thought of the books. Think of how beneficial and enlightening it would be if you had written down the thoughts and feelings of your ancestors as they read their favorite books. Those insights would be very valuable to a family history enthusiast.

Your descendants and family members will probably have an equal desire to know what you thought about the books you’ve read just as you have a desire to know what your ancestors read and thought about what they read.

So, there’s no easier place to start that with yourself. You can log on to the site for free and start to rank and write reviews for the books you’ve read. On the Shelfari site, you can easily find books you’ve read. Simple search by the title, ISBN, or author.

Share your reads by inviting family members and friends to see your book list. You have control as to the level of privacy on the site.

Get your friends, children, and grandchildren involved and linked on the site as friends. You’ll then be able to chat about shared interests in your reading and recommend your top picks to your friends.

Once your family members have created their list of books, ask them to export them (a feature included on Shelfari) so that you can store their favorite books in their family history folder you’ve created for them (if you’ve been so kind as to create a folder).

Why do this you might ask? – From personal experience I can attest that it is worth it. I’ve had many ancestors that have collected books and have written thoughts in the margins of the books. A precious treasure it is to read the same material that an ancestor had and to understand the thoughts, feelings, and insights. The only problem is that because there are so many descendants, it’s very difficult to share the books with everyone. Even distributing out one book per person doesn’t really cover it if the ancestor’s library wasn’t very large. By creating a digital bookshelf online and by writing your review (thoughts and feelings as you would in the margins of a book), you can share with all your family members the books you’ve read, how the books have affected you, and why you thought it was important.

As your posterity grows, they’ll be glad to have one more way to get to know you and your family members you helped get started keeping track of literary tastes and insights.

Go ahead, have fun and give it a try.

But wouldn’t it be inspiring if you had access to the books that your ancestors read and found moving and life changing?  You may even have the books they read, but unless they wrote down their feelings and insights about what they read, you’re left to guess what they thought about it.

GoodReads.com is a free service that lets you identify books that you have read, give the books a rating, and write your own thoughts and reviews about the books.  You can share the book list you’ve created with your friends and family.

Additionally, you can easily export (copy from the website) your list of books and your reviews so you can store them with your family history information on your home computer.

I had fun just listing the books I’ve read in the past few years and remembering what my thoughts were when I read them.

That’s why it might not be a bad idea to preserve the family “voice” in some way or another. Sure, now-a-days we have video that captures so much more than sound; however, most of the time, events are captured on video and not opinions, dreams, thoughts, and life lessons.

Audio recordings offer a great way for you or your family members to express themselves and to preserve that expression with tone and feeling.

Below are listed the top 5 ways to preserve sound recordings of your memories and insights or of those that you love:

1. Ancestry.com Family Tree – It almost couldn’t be easier with our top pick. You simply create a family tree on Ancestry.com using their free family tree program, click on the person in your tree for/by whom the audio recording will be made, and select “Audio.” You’ll then be prompted to create a new recording. You can choose to have the automated service call you and record your memory, or you can record straight from your own computer’s microphone. (Example picture below)

   

   You can share your recordings with other family members, or keep them private. It’s up to you, but let at least one other person have access to your recordings if you want them passed on some day.

2. To Your Computer – Many computers have either a microphone jack or a integrated microphone. Get a microphone or use the one on your computer and record your thoughts, stories, memories, etc. If you have Microsoft Windows, you can use “Sound Recorder” or even Windows Movie Maker (using the Narration option) to record your audio. The benefit of recording straight to your computer is that you can record for as long as you have hard-drive space and you can easily make a copy of your recording for family members. When you name the audio file you’ve created, include the date, your name, and the topic you discussed.
3. To a Digital Recorder - There are now many devices that will record your voice digitally. Many digital video cameras available that record to a memory card instead of a DV tape and also double as a voice recorder. You can record your stories to the device in audio format and then copy the recorded audio to your computer. Recording is a little less cumbersome since you don’t have to lug your computer around with you to get the job done, but you’ll need to know how to get the audio off the device and on to your computer.
4. Professional Studio - You could visit a professional recording studio to create your memories. Be prepared to pay a lot for the service; however, you’ll get a very high quality recording in a setting where you won’t be disturbed.  You’ll most likely be given a disc containing the audio files you’ve created.  Just make sure you go in prepared so you don’t waste time because you’ll be paying for the time you are there.
5. Non-digital Media – Recording voice to cassette tape or other form of analog recorder will still preserve audio for a while but will make extra work for someone else down the road. Media such as audio tapes will degrade over time and it will become increasingly more difficult to find devices that will play cassette tapes. Recording to tape will make it harder for someone to distribute copies of your recording to family members as making copies is a slow, manual process. Still better than nothing at all, analog recording would be our very last pick.

Tips on Recording - If you want to sound like you’re making up what you’re saying as you go when you record, that’s fine. However, you might want to consider making an outline of what you want to cover in your recording. To make things flow better, consider jotting down what you want to say so you don’t fumble with words and start the same recording over a dozen times trying to get it right.

If you’re making separate recordings of the same topic or experience, listen to your previous recording so you can pick up where you left off in terms of your tone, excitement level, and volume. It’ll make it easier for the listener who will probably listen to a good chunk of recordings in one sitting.

Purchasing a quality microphone might not be a bad idea if you’re going to record the audio to your computer. A crisp, clear recording provides a better listening experience. If you’re really serious, purchase a “pop screen” which is a little screen that is placed in between you and the microphone and prevents the “p” and “b” sounds from hitting the microphone with force making a “popping” sound.

Tips on Content - Take a moment to make a list of the various things you’d like to talk about. Try to keep each audio file you make centered around each topic. Five to ten minutes is a pretty good time frame to try to stick to for each file. Talk about things that are exciting to you so people can really come to know you better through what you’re saying.  Some ideas of what you can speak about are listed in a part article on how to write a personal history.

Pass it on - When you’re finished with your recordings, share them with others through email or by disk so that your “voice legacy” can be passed on.

For some of us, sitting down and finishing a comprehensive personal history can be quite difficult. Notice that I said finish and not begin because it seems like we’re all very good at beginning things, but it’s the finishing that makes the difference.

Well, here’s a way to write that personal history and finish it bit by bit. Believe it or not, you’ll end up with a better history.

The Better Way

Instead of starting out chronologically stating your life events (year by year that is), try compiling stories by topic. If you write your history year by year, it can take forever to finish and you’ll probably be bugged thinking that you’ve left something out.

The problem with writing your history starting from when you were born until the present is that your history usually becomes more of a list of things that happened in your life with short paragraphs explaining important events. Those events probably merit more than just a paragraph or two, but when you’re putting it together year by year, your history starts to get long, and you feel content with simply listing what happened.

Concentrated Content

On the other hand, you can write separate documents about major events, beliefs, and experiences you’ve had. You’ll feel like going into much more detail about your experiences and impressions when you dedicate a single document to the experience. For instance, write about the places you’ve lived and describe how those places have influenced your life today.

Your readers will get much more out of that than a simple line in a chronological history that states you lived in one place one year and a different place the next. Best of all, you’ll have more fun writing and get much more on paper!

Write about your favorite television shows and how they’ve impacted how you think (or how you don’t think, either way). Chart your views on religion, politics, love, etc. There’s so much more you can write about.

Creating the Documents

Create a separate document on your computer for each mini-history you create. You could use a naming convention: “Personal History by <your name> – <topic you’re writing about>”. Also, make sure you save the document in a format that will preserve your work such as a PDF. Add pictures to your document, and go into detail about your thoughts, feelings, what you’ve learned, and how the topic has help make you who you are. Too often, our personal histories end up being lists of events. Let’s go a little deeper than that.

What to Write About

Write a separate page or two about your favorite topics. Here’s a list of ideas of what you can write about:

• Places you’ve lived
• Influential individuals from your childhood
• Favorite vacations
• Jobs you’ve had
• Thoughts on politics
• Political views
• Religious views
• Top 5 favorite movies
• Civic and community service rendered
• Things you like to collect
• Write about your spouse
• Your hopes and dreams and how they have changed over the years
• The automobiles you’ve had or transportation you’ve used.
• Create a list of places that you’ve visited and when visited.
• Your favorite hobbies
• What do you like to shop for
• Your impressions of the times, wars, developments, etc.
• Collections of writings or poems that you’ve created
• Listing of certificates and accomplishments
• Favorite restaurants
• Favorite music
• Operations you’ve had (not the most fun, but interesting)
• The top 3 most difficult things you’ve ever done or had to go through
• Memberships in clubs or churches
• Write about your siblings and other relatives, (they’re children may not be as lucky as yours. They may not have written memories of their parents’ youth)
• Gardens you’ve grown
• Favorite foods
• Games you like to play and why they’re fun
• Favorite recipes (some families like to hand down recipes). Wouldn’t it be fun if your descendants knew which ones were your favorite and you left the recipes for them?
• Your favorite time of year
• Sports that you’ve played throughout your life
• Pets you’ve had
• Weather phenomenon you’ve seen or experienced.
• Technological advances you’ve seen in your day
• Spiritual experiences you’ve had
• Favorite toys you’ve had
• Thoughts on raising children
• Education achieved
• Activities you’ve participated in
• Favorite books

Personal History Template Documents

We’ve created twenty simple templates related to some of our favorite topics listed above. Feel free to download the documents to help you get started on your personal history.  To download the templates, click here.

Writing in a Physical Journal

You may find it easier to write your history in a physical journal. Physically writing your journal can be a great way to create an heirloom to be handed down in your family. You can find some heirloom journals at Rustic River Leather.

Each of the subjects mentioned above (or others that you think of) that you write about become your history and can be compiled into one big history someday. In the meantime, you’ve created stories and insights that can be easily shared rather than one big project that you know you should work on someday but never finish.