Blurb

They say that everyone has one good book in them. I’m not so sure. Ann Coulter must have 74 books out there, and from what I can see, they all suck donkey balls. I also wouldn’t rush to read anything by Kevin Federline, no matter how favourably Christopher Hitchens responded to the galleys.

But I’ll say this much: if I ever decide I have a good book in me, I’ll be making it with the help of Blurb.

Like Threadless or Prickies or the almighty JPG, Blurb jumps off with the understanding that doing stuff online is really cool and everything, but at the end of the day, sometimes you just want something tangible.

In the past, making your own books might have taken you dangerously close to the world of arts and crafts. I have no beef with that, but I’m really bad at it. Ask anyone in the street and they’ll tell you the same thing: my saddle-stitching be totally wiggity-wack.

Sites like this let me make stuff without having to, you know, make stuff.

Blurb isn’t the only self-publishing site out there, and it’s not even all that new. But in my opinion it’s emerged as one of the very best. (Executive summary: Proprietary software means you can do layouts offline and spare yourself losing work in progress; works on a Mac.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my magnum opus, “The Big Book of Claiming Other People’s Jokes As My Own: My Life Cooking While a Bit Drunk and Listening to Dub”.

What book would you make?

Go

UPDATE: A colleague today told me he had a bit of a rough ride making his book, but in playing with the software myself, I didn’t really encounter the same problems, most notably that the app was very slow. Your mileage may vary.