Blurb Community Books for Multi-User Publishing
October 16, 2007 — 03:03 AM PDT — by — Share This
Blurb is an on-demand publishing tool for the creation of quality books for your own purposes. With templates for common uses like cook books, baby books, and wedding books, Blurb has this service down.
So with its new offering, it takes online book creation to the next level with Community Books. This is a service that lets groups of people make a book together. It’s a way to leverage online networking for the purpose of creating a tangible product, where individuals can contribute in a productive manner. Community Books will launch in beta with photo-sharing. More features will be layered into the service in coming months.
Most of you are surely thinking of a wiki-book. Well, that’s not entirely the case with Blurb, but here are some examples of how the Community Book can be used for groups: a professional working with clients to create a book for an event, a family or corporate retreat book, or a very unique wedding book with quotes as contributed by attending guests.
I think this tool, or at least tools like this, will inevitably morph into highly integrated and automated wiki-like tools that can be used for a variety of purposes, even for the creation of novels (which is something we’re already seeing progress). As social networks and commerce options continue to merge, the integration of Blurb’s services will be more useful and necessary for the creation and distribution of content. SharedBook is another on-demand printing tool that is making moves for better integration with online social networks as well.
