Comments on: Turning Blogs Into E-Books: Meet the founder of Ebook Glue

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By: Dan Eldridge

Dan Eldridge — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:24:02 +0000

Andy — Right, the idea definitely isn’t new, although Shantanu is well aware of that.

(In fact, as I mentioned toward the end of the story, he’s working with Readability, which does essentially the same thing for Web content. As for why Readability is working with him? I don’t know. They probably saw something in him, as did I.)

The truth is that there are tons of different content-capture services and apps out there. But I find that some of them work better than others in *certain* ways. For instance, if I want to send an online article to my smartphone (so I can read it while walking down the street, for instance), I use the Pocket app (for Android) every time. I just really like how it appears on my phone. But if want to send an article to my Kindle 4, I’ll use Send to Kindle … except lately it’s been acting buggy, so I’ve been using Instapaper and pushing the article through my online Amazon account. (Kind of a pain.)

Likewise, I used to love Pulse, but now that I’ve discovered Google Currents … wow. It’s the only app of its sort that I use. (And it looks almost as good on my phone as on my Google Nexus 7, where it really shines.) Google Play Books, meanwhile, is kind of awful — in my opinion at least.

As for Ebook Glue … I don’t really know where it’s going to end up, and I don’t really think Shantanu does, either. (The kid’s only 18; I’m sure he has a lot of priorities that don’t involve reading!) But both he and his project will be worth keeping an eye on as they evolve, I think.

By: Michael W. Perry

Michael W. Perry — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:21:08 +0000

Getting a blog into ePub or mobi is of limited value. That and HTML are all digital viewing formats. Perhaps of more value would be software that turns a blog into something that can become a printed book or output as ePub or mobi.

For that, .doc format conversion is needed, changing coding into a Heading 1 style and the like. Microsoft’s doc format is dreadful, but it will let you move those blog posts into page layout programs such as InDesign.

In short, .doc is an input format that can be used to create all sorts of outputs (i.e. via Smashwords). On the other hand, ePub and mobi are output formats, currently of little value except for viewing. Editing them into something that looks better is a bit like editing raw HTML.

By: Frank Lowney

Frank Lowney — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:16:59 +0000

There are more and more things like this popping up that bring ePub creation into the hands of everyman. For example, folks who have a computer running MacOS X 10.7 or later can create ePub-based eBooks from just about anything they can select. Find the details at Padilicious: http://www.macosxautomation.com/lion/epub/index.html

By: -Andy-

-Andy- — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:41:04 +0000

So, it’s currently like dotEPub except it’ll allow a blog owner more control over the generated ebook if they support this site?

And the goal is something like FLAG, which creates complete eBooks of stories in multiple different formats from a large collection of fan fiction sites? Except for blogs and other sites?

More options are nice but the idea isn’t really new.

By: Dan Eldridge

Dan Eldridge — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:30:37 +0000

Hi Pam – yes, that’s exactly what that means. And as for the point … well, I think the two main points to keep in mind are that (1), this is a brand-new service that’s only been live online for two weeks, and as such, it’s very much still a work-in-progress. And (2), the service will soon be able to capture all of a blog’s text – or at least that’s one of Bala’s plans, as far as I understand it.

True, it’s not an earth-shattering project as it currently stands. But it has the potential to be something really useful – especially to those of us who prefer to read with E Ink e-readers. (As opposed to smartphones or tablets.)

By: Pam Bickell

Pam Bickell — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:03:18 +0000

“You may be disappointed to learn, for instance, that only the content that appears on a blog’s first page appears in the “glued” e-book.”

I don ‘t understand. Does the sentence above mean when you upload your blog the only page people can read is the blog’s first page? If that’s the case, what is the point?

Thank you,
Pam B