Blurb.com: Publish Your Own Damn Book

Recently, I shared some thoughts on how technology has made it easier for people to release music into the ether by drastically lowering the barriers to entry. A recent article in the New York Times about Amazon best-selling author Amanda Hocking made me start thinking about books and how writers have been given the power to release their own works in a similar fashion as music artists. The Times article talks strictly about e-publishing but what about releasing your own honest-to-goodness physical book? Blurb.com has enabled people to put together hardcover or softcover books of whatever they want (I suspect the Terms of Use ban certain types of works). I recently went through the process of creating a hardcover photo book to commemorate the summer my partner and I spent in the country. I'd been snapping pictures all summer and wanted to present her with a nice little gift for our upcoming anniversary.

I had previously tried using a competing site's product but found the process so hard to use that I gave up on a free trial to give Blurb a shot. There are a number of templates to use and it's as simple as uploading pictures and putting them in your template. You can create front and back covers as well as flaps and spines. In less than two hours' time spread out over a few days, I completed a photo book. Most of the book is iPhone pictures (the application will automatically tell you if the resolution is not acceptable for printing but most of my pictures were acceptable). There are a lot of options for paper stock and other enhancements so you can customize quite a bit. After finishing my book and placing my order, my package arrived in less than one week. My creation would not look out of place in a bookstore. I was amazed and psyched that I was able to make a one-of-a-kind gift. I can't wait to see the reaction when this gift is unveiled.

For me, technology is supposed to make it easier for people to do things that once took a great deal of time, effort, and money to do before whether it's in the form of a Gutenberg press, an airplane, or a telephone. If I wanted to create a book like this ten years ago, I'm not sure that any small printing shop would have the ability to print a copy of a book like this. Blurb.com is a game-changer and my mind is still blown two weeks later. With the new means of production and distribution available to us, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find good excuses to squash our creative urges and hide them from the world.