Rewriting - digital to print - the way of the future?

I have been slaving away transferring my blog to print. Well - experimenting with the first six months anyway.

Why?

Well my husband said it would be a pity to lose all that I have written and that I should transfer it to print for posterity as it were. I know there are companies that will do this - and the picture above may well be an ad for one of them. But I think most of them require you to have used their blog format in the first place. Well to be fair I am not sure about that. Anyway I asked the printer who does our film society newsletter if he could do it, and of course he can, because everything these days is digital - including printing. All he needs is a good pdf. And he gave me rough estimate of cost which seemed entirely reasonable so I thought I would give it a go. Besides I'd much rather support a small local business than go to a multinational.

First problem - what software to use. I looked at Pages, I looked at iBooks Author, I didn't look at Word and I finally, lazily, settled on InDesign which I think I am now regretting. I was lazy because I'm not so familiar with the way Pages and iBooks Author work and I was impatient. I suspect I should have persevered and learnt how to use them a bit more. Anyway I have now done three months of posts - halfway so I am now committed - at least for this first volume. Well I'm not so sure there will be more.

Because it's a very slow, if interesting process. It's basically copy and paste, but I obviously have to check things and reorganise the layouts of the pages rather than just fit in with what Wix can do, which is not a lot in terms of the design of the individual posts. Not that I have investigated all the things I could do online and there are lots more than I currently use. I also unfortunately, still have to check for typos. Although I do that before publishing a post I often miss something. And so far I have not been commenting retrospectively on what I wrote back then, but it's tempting to do that occasionally. And maybe I should. I'm still thinking about that. Because one of the interesting things about this whole thing is how I find I have sometimes changed my thinking, thought of something extra to say, found to my shame that I have repeated myself over and over again on some things, and also how the topic I was writing about has changed as well. And will continue to do so no doubt. So am I reproducing the past or evolving with the present? To comment or not to comment?

As to design. Well I played around a bit when I started, but basically, now I am just not really paying much attention to design. I think I should, and plan to go back to the beginning when I have finished and try and make the layout more professional looking. At the moment it's just text wall to wall as it were with the pictures scattered amongst them. I should look at some of my favourite designed cookbooks and see how I can use their ideas, whilst still referencing my blog in some way.

The transition from digital also requires me to think differently. The massive advantage of online is that you can send people elsewhere - to a recipe, an article, a picture just with a click of the mouse. You can't do that in print and so I have to devise ways of replacing that ability. Straight links to a recipe or an article have just been replaced with some words that will hopefully help the reader to find the recipe or article without too much bother. It's not as immediate though, and I don't actually see anyone making use of that, but then they may not click online either. However, they are unlikely to be sitting by the computer whilst reading (if indeed they do read it I mean). I have substituted an index for my 'category' headings instead of the categories, so that if my reader just wanted to look at all my articles to do with vegetables, for example, they can easily do so. On the whole though I think my blog readers do not go back to previous articles, so I suspect that my print readers won't also. Or maybe they will just dip into it here and there.

It seems that print is not disappearing. Indeed it is thriving with new and interesting ways of converting things digital to things printed all the time. Think photo books and calendars and cards, printed photographs, self-publishing, mugs and mouse mats. Plus the aforesaid companies that will convert your blog to print. Apparently, and this is no surprise, people prefer to read in print form rather than online. They pay more attention to print, and absorb the content more fully. When reading something online it seems one tends to scan rather than absorb. You can find things more easily in print than online - yes you can. Because you can remember roughly where something was on the page, and where in the book. Not possible with an ebook unless you bookmark it - but often you don't know that you wanted to bookmark something until later on. Maybe instead of the progression shown below - from quill pens (they should have started with clay and a stylus - or a rock and a chisel), to smartphone, we are actually reversing.

I suspect from the few odd comments that my husband has made since I started on this, that he thought it might have been a 'best of' publication. But it isn't. It's just a total transfer. There are two reasons for this.

The first is the question who decides what is the 'best'? What I think is the 'best' might not be what my potential readers think is the 'best'. So it's just too hard to pick and choose. All or nothing as it were.

Then putting it all there is somehow truer to what I was doing anyway. Maybe it shows a little bit how my mind works. Which could be interesting for future generations. Which brings me to who I am doing this for. I know I do not have many readers, which does not at all bother me. After all the main person I am doing this for is myself. Readers are a bonus - and I do appreciate them and their comments. Which, by the way, were missing from my early days because there was no easy commenting option to use. Now there is and I occasionally get comments, that, once again, I appreciate enormously. I suppose it's a sort of diary. Anyway I am planning to give a copy to each of my sons' families, to my husband, my sister and sister-in-law, whom I know read the blog, and I think that may be it. Maybe you too Graham if you would like it. You have often said it is a bit like a coffee table book.

But don't hold your breath. Volume one is not about to appear. I am halfway through the copy and paste process - it has taken me at least three months already - and then I shall have to go back and do all those checking and redesigning things as well. I reckon we are creeping towards just over 300 pages in total - maybe more, considering I thought it would be 200. I could cram it up more but I think that would look awful.

The again I could abandon the whole process anyway. I mean who am I doing it for? Does my husband really want a print copy? Will he read it? Perhaps he was just being nice. There are probably better things I could do with my time ...