In the News: Book Publishing

Blurb Home: Washington Post review of a demo of the product explains that you go from “Blogs to Books, using a ‘Blog Slurper.'” The service is still in beta testing.

It looks like an interesting product, but it’s not publishing books in the Library of Congress sense of things. No ISBN, etc. You’re publishing your own book in the same way that you could if you just printed it out using your home printer. Don’t really want to knock it, but it’s sort of like saying your photo album is a coffee table book.

Now I realize that in the classroom definition of things where we talk about publishing students work, it’s clearly publishing. And it’s a book if you think it’s a book. But it felt as if they left things out. It’s just a new tool for vanity publishing.