Handpicked Software

Blurb, the book company that lets you self-publish bookstore quality hardcover and paperback books, has finally added TypePad and WordPress.com support to their BookSmart book creation software.

BookSmart slurps the entries from your blog and autopopulates the pages (you also have the option of dragging and dropping entries to build your book). BookSmart doesn’t currently support importing from freestanding WordPress blogs, but you can easily open a free WordPress.com account and import your entries long enough for BookSmart to slurp them.

You can go freestyle, creating any kind of book from scratch, or let BookSmart jumpstart your cookbook, photo book, or blog book (poetry books are coming soon) using customizable templates. Readymade books (templates which already include some content; for example, a Groucho Marx quote in the This Dog’s Diary readymade: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”) are also available for your dog, cat, or baby book.

Blurb is still in beta and the BookSmart software, while easy to use, is a bit slow and buggy. It crashed the first time I imported a single entry from my WordPress.com blog, displaying a good-natured error message:

A 40-page book is $18.95 in paperback and $29.95 in hardcover, which includes a custom dust jacket. When your book is complete, you can offer it for sale in the Blurb bookstore. But if you’re interested in making money from book sales, you’ll need to buy in bulk for a discount (or check out CafePress or LuLu)

The BookSmart software is free and you can preview your finished book onscreen, which should have you salivating for the real thing. You can buy a copy of How to Make a Book (pictured above) for only $14.95, to get an idea of the quality. It includes a $10 coupon toward your next book. Or, download the PDF for free. It’s worth a look even if you don’t publish your book with Blurb.

BookSmart runs on Windows and Mac. Universal. Blurb