{"id":650,"date":"2006-02-09T09:29:20","date_gmt":"2006-02-09T14:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=650"},"modified":"2006-02-11T12:58:24","modified_gmt":"2006-02-11T17:58:24","slug":"limited-custom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=650","title":{"rendered":"Limited Custom"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the bloggers and aspiring authors out there, Eileen Gittins, CEO of Blurb<\/a>, is interviewed by C|Net as part of their DEMO ’06 Conference<\/a> coverage and they’ve posted the video online. At about 4 minutes, it’s worth watching for anyone<\/em> creating content (Link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

What Blurb provides, in the words of Gittins, is “a tool to enable anyone to convert their digital content, of whatever kind, into a professionally-finished book”. Especially interesting to me was the primary example shown: a book of recipes. Because the originating blog had numerous contributors, in the words of the CEO, “Blurb supports community-contributed books”. Now that’s something I’d not given any thought and it sounds cool, but it does raise the thorny intellectual property rights issue.<\/p>\n

While not cheap at US $32, the resulting output – a decent-sized 80-page hardcover – would make an excellent gift. Another option is if the book were priced at … say … $50 and sold to raise money at charity fund-raising events. If anyone could navigate the IP issues (and perhaps open source some legal documents to facilitate community efforts) it’s some of the more forward-thinking organizations out there (Randy<\/a>, you reading this?).<\/p>\n

This obviously isn’t really all that different from print-on-demand publishing already available online. However, it does<\/em> appear as if this tool is more flexible and convenient than most services since it uses a “realtime drag and drop metaphor” in combination with what appear to be standardized templates. Good enough for a lot of people. The print-on-demand services I’ve researched typically accept manuscripts from authors and then, for a fee, either approve the layout for printing or provide that service… on top of the cut they get from the book.<\/p>\n

So what we really have is a service that leverages other content creation\/aggregation applications, reduces manuscript variability by providing a free layout tool to ensure conformance, and then acts as a marketplace for the finished product (not yet available on their site). The blog angle is nice, but blogs are an interactive medium; I doubt my links are going to translate to print. Additionally, most blogs appropriate images from other sites – often without listing credit. Even so, for those who are perhaps only documenting their travels – an example cited in the video – by posting their blog entries via email, this service is pretty nice.<\/p>\n

It also reminds me of Nike iD. Limited customization. I bet we start seeing a lot<\/em> of this.<\/p>\n

{Just noticed the Blurb official presentation is online. Haven’t watched it yet, but here’s the – Link<\/a>}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the bloggers and aspiring authors out there, Eileen Gittins, CEO of Blurb, is interviewed by C|Net as part of their DEMO ’06 Conference coverage and they’ve posted the video online. At about 4 minutes, it’s worth watching for anyone … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}