I'm working on a new version of my printed blog

In 2021, I embarked on a journey to print out the content on my blog. The scope of the project was limited. I decided to print all of my coffee posts published both on this blog as well as Steampunk Coffee, for whom I had written numerous blog posts. I decided to print only the coffee posts so that the printed version would have a theme. I was excited by the prospects of being able to hold my writings on coffee in my hands, and looked forward to a day where I could print another volume. That time has come.

I have been reflecting on the blog posts I have written since printing the first edition of my blog. I now have many more posts that span topics from AI to coffee to the IndieWeb. I have decided to compile all of these posts into a single PDF and order a physical copy of every post aggregated into one document.

To create the PDF, I used pandoc, like I did in the last version of my blog. I have a bash script that takes all of the markdown files in which my posts are stored, extracts the titles, header images, header image alt text, and post content, then compiles them all into a single PDF. This PDF has a table of contents, added using a flag available in the markdown command.

The final version of this PDF is over 800 A4 pages.

To have the book published, I reached out to a local print house. After some discussion, it was noted that they could not print a hard-cover version of the book. The optimal binding solution was to use ring binds. To ensure the structural integrity of the paper, the book would be divided into two ring-bound volumes. To keep costs low, I opted for black-and-white printing.

We are presently working out the final details before printing. The cost of this will be around 55 GBP, reasonable given the amount of content that will need to be printed.

I look forward to holding a new version of my printed blog in my hands!

Interesting statistic addendum! My blog contains 394,170 words at the time of writing this post, excluding those published on this page. I would guess around 20,000 of those words are from interview posts, in which the majority of the content was written by the interviewer rather than me.

Tagged in printed blog.