An area that my teaching in expository writing needs improved is publishing and audience. My students need more of an audience to write to–more than just writing essays to me. I’ve got some plans in mind. Next year may finally be the year that I implement blogs (I’ve wanted to for a while, but I want to make sure I have a set plan in mind for them). Another is that I need to set up a list of publications for them to submit to…and encourage them to do this.
What I’ve done this week is a third part of my plan, and it involves the Blurb website. Blurb allows you to publish ebooks or hard copy books, magazines, or portfolios at a very reasonable price.
First, I downloaded the free BookWright program from Blurb. For those who aren’t familiar with publishing programs, Blurb also provides tutorials. However, if you’ve used publishing programs before, BookWright is intuitive and easy to figure out.
Note: If you’re used to using Adobe InDesign and you want to publish more advanced, high-graphic pages, I would suggest sticking with that. It will give you more control over your pages, and Blurb will upload InDesign files for publication, too.
Then, click the upload button when you’re finished, and the program will automatically upload all your BookWright files to its website. There, you can order hard copies, PDF files, and ebook versions. You also have options of how you want to promote your book–whether you want to keep it semi-private to those to whom you provide a url, or if you want it available to the public. Blurb also provides embed codes for Facebook, Blogger, WordPress, or any website, so you can promote your book there.
Blurb sets the base price for each book based on their costs, but you can then add your own profit margin. This is a great way for others to purchase your book without you risking money.
Blurb provides many other options, too, for selling your book. Definitely go check it out!
Oh, and if you want to check out the book I made of my last year’s class’s writing, you can see it here:
