4 ms·

I keep thinking about starting a business where I take people’s blogs and produce them as professionally formatted books, mainly for these reasons. I am qualifi

I keep thinking about starting a business where I take people’s blogs and produce them as professionally formatted books, mainly for these reasons. I am qualified to do it and making books is something I enjoy, but I don’t know if people would pay for it. Even after reading articles like this, it feels like something only me and none other people think about let alone value.

chaircher 4y ago
Have you thought about how people would pay for it for the writing/blogs of deceased loved ones? The business is definitely there, a lot of art students have to turn their digital blogs and documents into physical books too for exhibitions
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
I want this desperately. I’ve got close to 8 years blogging with photos on Wordpress. It’s a diary of my son’s childhood. I looked at the options… there are very few but currently I think the best is https://www.blookup.com/en/products/blog-book/wordpress/auth/ https://www.blookup.com/en/products/blog-book/wordpress/auth... The price is decent. They split the blog into multiple volumes if needed. But I just don’t know about the quality. And there are very very few customizations. Just to get the date printed on each blog entry was difficult. I really want to customize it more. I have not pulled the trigger yet but probably will because the alternatives all suck. All the other options I found could not consume my blog; it was too large or their scraping was just too poor. But these guys use some kind if Wordpress api to get the entries instead of scraping. And it works decently. They are in France I think so pages are A4 instead of American sizes.
- velcrovan 4y ago
  I don’t know if you are on a Mac but I found out about Vellum yesterday: https://vellum.pub/ https://vellum.pub/ It might be a laborious manual process getting your content in there, but the results seem to look good and you don’t need to mess with LaTeX. If you’re interested in just discussing further, joeld at protonmail.com. Like I say, making books from websites is just something I’ve been tinkering with for years, so I’d be happy to do a zoom call or whatever.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    Thanks. I emailed you from a gmail account.
inanutshellus 4y ago
I think this is a pretty decent idea and I'll add a tangential market: personal wikis. I have a couple personal Mediawikis I've used for various domains, like genealogy, that I'd like to have printed. I guess most especially it, as the impermanence of all digital content is painfully obvious there.
- velcrovan 4y ago
  Would people really pay a professional to produce print-ready PDFs of their personal wikis, do you think? Or are you more thinking of a paid software product that would do it for them? The latter would be tough since wikis come in a million different forms.
  - inanutshellus 4y ago
    Mediawiki is pretty standard though. I don't know if there are enough clients to justify the work, but it's something that's been on my mind for a while.
bitwize 4y ago
Someone mentioned Spolsky's book that did just that here on Hackernews -- and was met with whinging about how "crass" it is to reproduce and sell people's blog posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32110064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32110064 Personally, like you, I think this would be a neat service and can see the value in it -- but should you decide to make this your business, be aware that it will probably not be universally well received.
- velcrovan 4y ago
  Right, the idea would be to preserve content in book form when hired to do so by the author. If they wanted to turn around and sell to the public that would be up to them, or they can just print copies for themselves/family/whatever. I’m not familiar with Spolsky’s book, but I am familiar with the contributors and even know a couple. I tried looking through what was available in the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon, but I could not find any info on whether he obtained permission to reproduce those texts. In general I would be shocked if such a well known person did so without permission from so many high-profile authors. Of course, some of the blog posts may have been permissively licensed to begin with (CC-BY, e.g.) but I know not all of them were.
M5x7wI3CmbEem10 4y ago
I'd hire you for this. I don't see an email or contact page on your profile, though.
- velcrovan 4y ago
  As mentioned in another reply — feel free to email me at joeld at protonmail.com
marttt 4y ago
For inspiration, see the Low-tech Magazine's Printed Website: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/low-tech-magazine-the-printed-website.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/low-tech-magazine-the-printe... Currently three volumes of online articles on paper, and a fourth book with readers' comments. Around 2,400 pages of text and photos.

chaircher 4y ago

Have you thought about how people would pay for it for the writing/blogs of deceased loved ones? The business is definitely there, a lot of art students have to turn their digital blogs and documents into physical books too for exhibitions

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

I want this desperately. I’ve got close to 8 years blogging with photos on Wordpress. It’s a diary of my son’s childhood. I looked at the options… there are very few but currently I think the best is https://www.blookup.com/en/products/blog-book/wordpress/auth/ https://www.blookup.com/en/products/blog-book/wordpress/auth... The price is decent. They split the blog into multiple volumes if needed. But I just don’t know about the quality. And there are very very few customizations. Just to get the date printed on each blog entry was difficult. I really want to customize it more. I have not pulled the trigger yet but probably will because the alternatives all suck. All the other options I found could not consume my blog; it was too large or their scraping was just too poor. But these guys use some kind if Wordpress api to get the entries instead of scraping. And it works decently. They are in France I think so pages are A4 instead of American sizes.

velcrovan 4y ago
I don’t know if you are on a Mac but I found out about Vellum yesterday: https://vellum.pub/ https://vellum.pub/ It might be a laborious manual process getting your content in there, but the results seem to look good and you don’t need to mess with LaTeX. If you’re interested in just discussing further, joeld at protonmail.com. Like I say, making books from websites is just something I’ve been tinkering with for years, so I’d be happy to do a zoom call or whatever.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Thanks. I emailed you from a gmail account.

inanutshellus 4y ago

I think this is a pretty decent idea and I'll add a tangential market: personal wikis. I have a couple personal Mediawikis I've used for various domains, like genealogy, that I'd like to have printed. I guess most especially it, as the impermanence of all digital content is painfully obvious there.

velcrovan 4y ago
Would people really pay a professional to produce print-ready PDFs of their personal wikis, do you think? Or are you more thinking of a paid software product that would do it for them? The latter would be tough since wikis come in a million different forms.
- inanutshellus 4y ago
  Mediawiki is pretty standard though. I don't know if there are enough clients to justify the work, but it's something that's been on my mind for a while.

bitwize 4y ago

Someone mentioned Spolsky's book that did just that here on Hackernews -- and was met with whinging about how "crass" it is to reproduce and sell people's blog posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32110064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32110064 Personally, like you, I think this would be a neat service and can see the value in it -- but should you decide to make this your business, be aware that it will probably not be universally well received.

velcrovan 4y ago
Right, the idea would be to preserve content in book form when hired to do so by the author. If they wanted to turn around and sell to the public that would be up to them, or they can just print copies for themselves/family/whatever. I’m not familiar with Spolsky’s book, but I am familiar with the contributors and even know a couple. I tried looking through what was available in the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon, but I could not find any info on whether he obtained permission to reproduce those texts. In general I would be shocked if such a well known person did so without permission from so many high-profile authors. Of course, some of the blog posts may have been permissively licensed to begin with (CC-BY, e.g.) but I know not all of them were.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 4y ago

I'd hire you for this. I don't see an email or contact page on your profile, though.

velcrovan 4y ago
As mentioned in another reply — feel free to email me at joeld at protonmail.com

marttt 4y ago

For inspiration, see the Low-tech Magazine's Printed Website: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/low-tech-magazine-the-printed-website.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/low-tech-magazine-the-printe... Currently three volumes of online articles on paper, and a fourth book with readers' comments. Around 2,400 pages of text and photos.