The Complete Works of ME!

June 13, 2008 8:31 AM

What would be the most efficient way convert every single thing I have ever written on the internet into one large book that I can keep on my shelf?

Over the past 8 years, I must have written so much on the internet, it could be made into a whole series of books. I've got over 300 articles on a particular site, about 1000 comments on another site, and various postings on many different sites. I've got story characters that are half developed, but still tell an okay story.

I'd like to take all this material and make it into a book that sort of makes sense. Not a book to publish, just a personal book so that in 10 years I can flip through it and think - damn, you used to be such an idiot. Or maybe - hmm, that's not that bad of an idea.

Some of the things I write may need context, so one would have to quote from the parents comments or something.

The problem is that a lot of this material is just so random and difficult to get at. Most sites do not offer full rss feeds for a users entire comments. One has to do this manually.

The low tech solution I have come up with so far is to visit each site, copy all my comments and articles manually into MS word, then go to MS Word and format everything nicely, then send it to Lulu to print.

This would take about a month to do, and I don't have that time to waste on something so unimportant. Is there a more efficient way of doing this?

(The sites in question would be forums, slashdot-like sites, reddit-like sites as well as wordpress-blogs)

posted by ChabonJabon to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Blurb can turn a Blog into a book automatically. You'll be able to do plenty of customization, and you'll save a lot of time if you find a way to import your comments into another blog.
posted by Alison at 8:39 AM on June 13

The low tech solution I have come up with so far is to visit each site, copy all my comments and articles manually into MS word, then go to MS Word and format everything nicely, then send it to Lulu to print.

This would take about a month to do, and I don't have that time to waste on something so unimportant. Is there a more efficient way of doing this?

I disagree that it's unimportant. I think it's important enough to dedicate the time to. I'm sure someone will come along with some great ideas about making it more efficient, but let me just encourage you to go ahead and do it, even if it's a slow process. Even if it takes a year of working on whenever you get a chance, think of it this way: a year will go by whether or not you put your book together. Look ahead a year. Would you rather have the book done or not? Go for it!
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 8:39 AM on June 13 [3 favorites]

Instead of copying all your writings into MS Word to reformat them, why not just save the web pages as PDFs and have your book contain copies of all the original pages? For forum comments and such, you could clip the relevant part of the page. That way you can get the job done much quicker, and your book will maintain its web character because its pages are literally web pages. heh ;-)
posted by zachlipton at 9:15 AM on June 13

have to quote from the parents comments or something

Wouldn't saving someone else's words like this be a violation of the forum's terms of service? Maybe not, but something to check into.

If you use Firefox, the Scrapbook extension is very good for saving pages. You can set your preferences to save the individual page you are currently viewing, or use wildcards to save other similar pages (like all the pages for a topic) from the same base URL. You can also decide whether to save the images and the layout. Saving without images and extra layout code gives you basically plain text html files, which you can then open in Word.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 9:31 AM on June 13

Find a broke college student, give them the relevant information, and pay them a few bucks an hour to compile it for you.
posted by chrisamiller at 9:37 AM on June 13

As lovely as college student slave labor sound, you're going to have to pay them at least minimum wage. (They won't go for it otherwise). How about posting it up to one of those e-lancing websites? They would know the fastest way to compile your stuff, I bet.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 11:48 AM on June 13

This sounds like a job for outsourcing!
posted by acridrabbit at 12:59 PM on June 13

I seem to recall that our own stavros the wonderchicken performed some magical personal aggregation thingy that resembled in my mind what you are seeking here. Then again, there is a solid possibility I have no idea what he did given my laughably dubious understanding of blogging and tools and apps and...well, now I'm just embarrassing myself. Good luck.
posted by Jezebella at 9:40 PM on June 14