SharedBook has enhanced their Blog2Print widget, as announced yesterday. Regular readers may remember I covered their original intro in late June and was glad that they'd started with Blogger so I could give it a try. I did experience some frustration in trying to get that first version to work (which ultimately seemed to come back to my blog being on the "old" Blogger system), and I'd like to report a much happier outcome this time around -- at least through the book creation and ordering steps -- with the revised Widget and my relatively short hands-on session this morning. (Note their improved version touts enhanced performance and a new photo insertion feature, so my success this time around likely mostly has to do with my change to the "new" Blogger as opposed to any of the SharedBook improvements.)In addition to the "Print this Blog as a Book" button quickly and easily installing on my blog (see it below and to the right), the rest of the steps leading up to my book order went fairly well too. My first choice, however, to create a book from my entire blog (nearly 300 posts over a year and a half) didn't agree with the creation engine, it would seem, and after waiting much longer than the advised "several minutes" I started over and just requested this summer's entries. (Actually I thought I'd entered a start date of June 1 but the PDF came back with a mid-June start point, but I let it go, especially since I was already a bit over my budget-driven 20-page goal even with the first two weeks of June missing.)
The screens to customize seemed to require too much of a learning curve, so after a few feeble attempts I gave up on my attempts to customize the inside of my book except for changing the dedication (I was also hoping to reduce the size of some of the graphics and eliminate some of the widows and orphans). I did easily change the binding and cover options (to a fancy hard-bound suede model) and let the order fly, with a promised ship date of August 13th. So stay tuned for the unveiling of the physical model!
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