It’s no secret that I love books. I think it’s also pretty common knowledge that I love making them as well. What I’ve not talked about – not for a very long time anyway – is the first book I put together, a family history of collected stories and anecdotes for my grandparents for their 80th birthdays. I typeset it myself (badly) and got it printed on the wrong sort of stock and if I had my time over I’d do it differently – but it was done. I made it. It was special because what it contained was a visible, not to mention readable, account of the love of a family for each other. It wasn’t done under any ‘imprint’, it didn’t need depositing into the National Library.
The story of this first book fell out of my mouth when I was chairing the panel on ‘writing and family’ during the Emerging Writers’ Festival. There I described how I ‘launched’ the book in front of my whole clan, when everyone jumped on their copies, and I still remember the hush and scraping of the pages as they were turned, devoured. It was one of my happier moments, I can tell you.
I think Blurb understands this desire to record and document life’s treasured moments really well. I know of many people who have turned their online and Instagram shots into lovely photo books to either keep or give away as presents, be they photos of babies, epic adventures or other journeys of a more personal nature. I’ve been planning on doing one myself for a while. I’d like to collect into the one place pictures of the kids (these sorts of books are almost the ‘new’ photo album, right?)
And, hopefully, it would end up looking something along the lines of these…
I need to add that at Blurb there’s no need to limit your options to just books – also on offer are magazines, planners, notebooks, brochures and many more. So many ideas!
And if you’d like an injection of capital for your creative purposes, then today is your lucky day. Thanks to Blurb I have two (2) $100 vouchers to put towards a project. Exciting!
As ever – there are rules. Here they are:
1) You must be an Australian resident.
2) To enter you need to leave a comment saying what kind of book you would make if you won the $100 voucher. The two entries I deem to be most creative will win.
3) This competition will close at 5pm Thursday 1 August 2013.
4) If contact cannot be made with a winner(s) I reserve the right to choose another.
Thank you Blurb! You can also find them on Facebook here.
Edited: this giveaway has now closed. I’ll contact the winners shortly.
