Comments on: Instapaper (analogue edition)

By: emmetc

emmetc — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:39:40 +0000

@none: I guess you could do that too… in fact, that’s the point of Instapaper. I just prefer the form factor of a book, and like I said in the original post there’s something special about reading a book that’s just for me.

By: none

none — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:39:53 +0000

I don’t understand this lulu part. Why not just use a laser printer?

By: Chuck Smith

Chuck Smith — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:42:15 +0000

Cool idea! I had the same problem, but now I use the open source program Calibre to sync my Instapaper once a day and copy it to my Sony Reader PRS-505. Not quite a book, but it’s always up to date. Anyway, if you have an ereader device, it might be a nice solution for you in the future!

By: Chris Butler

Chris Butler — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:26:21 +0000

Emmet,

This was a great idea. You inspired me to do the same thing… TWICE! I posted a review and images of the book I just created on Lulu here: http://www.newfangled.com/creating_a_book_on_lulu_dot_com

-Chris

By: emmetc

emmetc — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 09:44:08 +0000

Here's how I made the book Firstly, I collected all of the articles that I wanted to read using Instapaper. You don't have to do this, you could just collect a few articles yourself. I needed to copy and paste all of the articles into a PDF or Word document to then upload that to lulu.com, the company that prints the book. I tried using Google Docs but it has a document size limit so I had to look elsewhere. I'm on a Mac so I used NeoOffice to create the document (if you're on Windows you can use Microsoft Word of OpenOffice). I opened each article in Instapaper (e.g. like this one), copied the text of the article, and pasted it into my NeoOffice document. I didn't bother spending lots of time on formatting the text -- I added a page break between each article and that's it. The I saved that as a Word document (.doc) file. Lulu.com takes care of the rest. On their website you can create a new book, upload your .doc file, and customise your book (I chose the A5 size, which is roughly the same as a regular paperback). That's it.

By: Dub Snothiue

Dub Snothiue — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:51:44 +0000

Adam, if Emmet can’t explain that, can you? How easy is this to do?

By: Dub Snothiue

Dub Snothiue — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:48:52 +0000

Some of the above posters ask questions about the procedure by which you made this, and you didn’t address that. Could you please?

By: emmetc

emmetc — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:15:08 +0000

Thanks for all the comments, folks. As a couple of people have mentioned, I definitely think there is the kernel of a product or service idea here. I was really glad to see that Marco, the developer of Instapaper, wants to make this process simpler from his end. There has also been lots of interesting conversation happening on the web the past week or so about the future of journalism, in particular Steven Johnson's excellent take, which promotes the role of editors and curators in distilling content. As commenters here have also pointed out, there are some things to be careful of here. Copyright or not screwing over the original authors is certainly a concern, although not in a single print run meant for personal consumption, in my opinion. Some revenue-share deal could certainly be an option for someone who wanted to act as a publisher. I hadn't considered the environmental impact of this until Nina mentioned it. All in all, it's great to see that people were interested in this. I do believe that niche curatorship/editing and personalization are pushing the future of publishing in two slightly different directions, but there's probably room in that future for both of those approaches to succeed. As it stands, I remain amazed that I can walk into a bricks-and-mortar newsagents that stocks literally thousands of magazines and fail to find a single one that interests me.

By: bowerbird

bowerbird — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:20:16 +0000

i’d suggest you make the book publicly purchasable.

and if you sell enough copies, share the proceeds
(if there are any) with the authors of the articles…

even if there are no proceeds, make sure that
the u.r.l. to each blog is mentioned prominently,
both for attribution, and to send traffic their way.

print-on-demand is getting _very_ interesting!

-bowerbird

By: Nina

Nina — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:02:44 +0000

Just one question: What’s the environmental impact of doing something like this? Usually I feel slightly better reading on the computer than printing out, even though this might just be irrational (server and computer power can actually be quite environmentally destructive), but for some reason it feels more “right” than printing something out and throwing it away. And how do you feel about reading articles like this on a Kindle or something?
My reading is always getting way too far ahead of me :/