Want to back-up your BookSmart book files, share an in-progress book with an editor, collaborator, or even your pet? Just kidding about that last part. Exporting your book creates a single file that can easily be burned to a CD, copied to a new computer, or passed to a friend that has BookSmart installed as well. Here’s how:
1. Open your book in Blurb BookSmart®
2. Select “Create book archive/backup” from the File Menu
3. Choose where you’d like to save your book on your computer. This will create a file with a .bookexport extension.
4. This .book file is self-contained book including all images and text. Burn this to a CD as an archive or copy to a different computer. If you have a co-author or friend with BookSmart they can take this .book file and make revisions to the book much in the same way you would with a Word or PowerPoint document.
5. The final step is opening the book in BookSmart. First, start up BookSmart. If a book is already open select “Import Book” from the File Menu. If no book is open press the “Import Book” button on the Welcome Screen.
That should do it.
What else are people doing with their book exports? Tell me.
55 Comments
Someone sent me this excellent way of backing up all Blurb books, on a Mac:
Locate the BookSmartData folder which can be found in your user folder (typically labeled with your name and identified by a small house icon). Open the “Library Folder,” then the “Application Support” folder. This folder contains another folder named “BookSmartData.” Make a copy of the BookSmartData folder to back-up your books. Note: Do not move this folder, as BookSmart won’t be able to open your books.
Related to backing up files, I’d encourage Blurb users to write to Blurb.com and encourage them to enhance the installation process so we have the choice of drive on which to install the software. Right now it is only C: and I can’t remember the last time I did a software install, large or small, that didn’t give a choice of drive.
I’ve written to Blurb.com tech support about this and the reply is that they are thinking about it. Hearing from others may make the difference. I hope they’ve designed the template software so that adding such a feature would be trivial to program, perhaps involving just a Registry setting in Windows.
This feature is GREAT. For anyone who can’t imagine a situation where this would be handy, I worked with my wedding photographer to put together a photo album for our wedding. I’m a graphic designer, so naturally I wanted to design the book. However, the high-res versions of all our wedding photos were kinda off limits to me (until I purchased them). So I ended up designing the book with “FPO” photos, then sending it to the photographer to replace them with the full-sized versions.
In this situation, I was on a Mac, and she was on a PC — so the BookSmartData transfer way wouldn’t have worked.
WONDERFUL!
Hi Roscoe - Your suggestion is definitely on our list of BookSmart improvements. I can’t give you a timeline of when we’ll get to it (you should see our list!), but we will be looking at it soon. Thanks!
I’d like to add to Roscoe’s comment. I’d also like to be able to build the library on an external drive. Much like iphoto or Aperture let’s you choose where to store the files created. This would free up space on my laptop for processing the books.
Thanks!
Ditto. I found it strange that I could not assign where the application was going to reside… AND…. where my book projects were going to reside. Anyone truely managing their system doesn’t put everything on their C drive. I would much prefer to pick and choose where files and folders where going to reside.
For Mac users, there is an easy workaround to change the location of your book project data. You can put your BookSmartData folder wherever you want in your file system and create a symbolic link named “BookSmartData” under (your home)/Library/Application Support/ folder. This works for me so far.
Please Blurb allow the uer to specify where the book data is stored.
I configured my system so that NO data is on my C drive, instead it is on a separate data drive. However, now along comes Book-NotSo-Smart and puts the dam data files on C without so much as a please-may-I. This is just bad design in this day and age.
Another issue is that the raw photos should be kept available in their original format, instead of trying to hide them by reallocating their extension as .ORIGINAL. Also when the photos are stored, all their metadata is stripped out. When a project is over I want to archive a complete copy of the project with the original photos.
I want to save my book (ade woth Blurb) as pdf… How can I do?
Hi Monica. the short answer is no, but here’s more info on work-arounds.
You guys should have a flash and PDF export thingie, without the watermarks. Cause we invest so much time creating a book that we should have the option to export it. I don´t care if you charge 5 bucks or something. Just do it please!
Ditto - I too would love to see a proper PDF export function… I want to be able to proof a book and show it to others without watermarks and with the cover. Booksmart is a marginal layout program at best, with lots of limitations, quirks and bugs, but If I use Blurb to print my books, out of necessity, I spend a lot of time building (and re-building) a book with it - so please allow us the small luxury of proofing our books properly.
I just finished creating a book, ordered a copy last night (so the downloading on your site is complete), and then this morning my hard drive crashed. It appears to me to unrelated to the book — just a good old fashioned hardware problem. My associate at work wants to be able to review my book, and I’d like her to have access to it. How can this be done - my computer is dead, and I’m getting a new one tomorrow.
Thanks.
Tom,
Sounds like a question for Customer Support. Please contact them using this form.
Good luck with retrieving your book.
– Kathy
With a multiplicity of book publishing programs available, Blurb needs to quickly make the program available to be saved to any drive on the computer. Many computers “time-out” at a 20-30 MB upload, if someone isn’t on a commercial server. It is alarming to think that one could invest WEEKS or a MONTH programming a 150-300 MB book, and then the system crash or an upload then not be possible. There has to be a way devised to save the book on CD-R and send it in. Right now we are on the verge of ordering books, and then further ordering books for clients, but can predict in advance that we’ll have upload problems due to size of our book(s). This blog does not make it clear as to whether one can move the saved data to another computer and actually SEND it in and upload it from another system after creating the book on our home computer. WE may have to create the book and then FIND somewhere else to upload it from –such as the computer of our computer tech or a friend. It seems that dozens of people have had problems. BookSmart is not unique technology. Other publishers use it. Customers will come back to Blurb for the look of the book covers, the pricing and the web site — versus taking the files elsewhere to print. It makes no sense to have the files restricted to C drives –which no one does anymore. Other publishers also allow you to upload a few pages at a time — uploading by chapters or by pages, in case the system will not upload a 300MB book at once.
In the 60 days that it will take us to complete our text we hope to find a WAY to CONVENIENTLY upload files to you.
Any resolutions or solutions from customers –please advise!
Hi Regina,
To hear solutions from Blurbarians like yourself, I really recommend posting your questions to the Forums. In the interim, I hope you don’t mind hearing from Blurb.
Our model is based on relying on broadband to get your book project from your desktop to our printers and back to you as quickly as possible. Changing the way we do that, either by accepting CDs or other media would be completely counter to our service and not one that we are considering.
That said, if you ever experience problems uploading your book, please contact us immediately. If the information in our Forums or FAQs don’t help solve your upload problem, it becomes our customer support team’s number one goal to solve for you on a one-on-one basis.
And you’re right, the ability to store books on drives other than the primary drive (C: on Windows) is a known limitation with BookSmart, and we are working to address this in a future release.
I hope my answers help.
Thanks for posting!
– Kathy
Hi there,
I’m a wedding photographer in Australia and am looking at offering your books as part of my packages. Being able to show a flash or proper pdf to customers would be really handy. Also I must agree with the comments above that it would be good to choose where to save things. I do love your site though and am very excited about being able to offer beautiful books to my clients.
Here’s a suggestion for the crash/backup dilemma and a way to increase Blurb usability: have the Blurb software web based (on a Blurb server) so an author can log into their book and work on it from anywhere in the world.
I made a book last year and saved a copy of it by copying the BookSmartData folder (as mentioned above). I’ve just now downloaded the latest version of BookSmart and don’t know how to incorporate the folder into the new program folders in order to open the book! I need to order more copies soon. Does anyone know where to place the BookSmartData folder from an older version of BookSmart into the folders of the newer version of BookSmart?!
I want someone else to be able to add pages to my book that they created separately, on their own computer - not just to edit my pages. Is there a way to do this?
everytime i try to import a book file it says that file was not an exported file for version 2 or whatever. if i try to just open them it says they are not valid win32 files. HELP
Not being a computer guru I have a dumb question…If I export my book, is it totally removed from my computer?
Thank you!
Penny
I would also like to rename my book subdirectories and have BookSmart pickup the new names when it’s started.
I found that BookSmart’s backup is much slower than just copying the directory contents using Windows. But if I rename the directory, or create a new one that’s a copy of an existing one, then it doesn’t show up in the list of titles.
I’d could make several more suggestions about the storage interface in BookSmart, including the tiny size of the book selection screen when the program starts. But I’m sure you’ve already heard about these.
I’d like to echo the calls above for proper PDF export.
I’m also a wedding photographer and we create dozens of books a year. Having Blurb.Com on the printed proof makes the whole service useless. I’m not against the watermarking, but if you want to cater to professionals you have to give us more options to remove your branding.
I handle work for tourism bureaus and hotels. You need some sort of PDF output. How can I ask everyone in a tourism agency to upload a program like BookSmart they’ll never use except when we have a project? Or worse yet, that they may start to use and then eliminate me. Get with it. You have a business product here but its not business friendly. As it is I have to build a book in BookSmart for Blurb and then rebuild it from scratch in QuarkXpress and make a PDF. That’s a lot of extra work for me. I try to give Blurb some business and in doing so I have to do double my work. Thanks a lot. Add a PDF output, please.
I think Book smart is clever not having a PDF function-
because you can only puchase from them and not from other companies(I think it is a very clever marketing tool) It would be great to have the function though - I must admit, but if you are really THAT professional I think you will be able to design your layout in Indesign first in any way and then maybe import it to BookSmart… this way you will be able to have your own pdf and you will be able to order your book through BookSmart? To TIMOTHY - I think what Jack April 18, 2008 – 6:06 am - had a good suggestion and that this might help you to?
@Timothy Rock,
Actually, you can create your own full-bleed layout with QuarkXpress (or even with Adobe InDesign) then export it as PDF, then rasterize your PDF in Adobe Photoshop and then export your masterpieces as PNG. Finally, you can import it into Blurb Booksmart.
Hope that helps! Brian, a passionate Blurbarian
I’m working on a book for my father in my computer at work. I also want to work from my computer at home from time to time. How can I access to my book if the book is installed only in the c drive at work? Please let me know if there’s a way to do this?
Thanks.
File => Print => Adobe PDF (not work properly) the album is an 8 x 10 and the PDF created should match the album layout size no?
I am a wedding photographer and it took me 3 hours to design an album and now I have spent 6 hours trying to export a PDF so I can have my client proof it. Its sad to say but I have to take me business else where as blurb as no intentions to help out our industry with proofing. Cant find any info on the forums or website regarding proper PDF export. I shot 15 wedding this summer and an average wedding proof book is $50. 15 x $50 => going to another company.
Ahmed
@Timothy Rock
Totally agreed that is unreasonable to ask a client to download/upload Booksmart when a proofreading is necessary. We are asked to do viral marketing for free, Madame Gittins!!
Leave the watermarking on the page (still a decent free viral marketing for Blurb) but you absolutely should allow us to save and send a PDF version to the client for feedback.
Blurb software crashes every time I try to import a book file that I exported to a jump drive from my other computer. It will not let me import the file. Completely annoying!!
Any Advice out there?
HELP! I accidentally MOVED the Booksmart Data Folder to my desktop instead of copying it. Now when I open Booksmart, my books aren’t there. I moved the folder back under LIBRARY > APPLICATION SUPPORT but the books still don’t show up when I try to open the library. Does anyone know what I am supposed to do to get my books back? Oh and I never exported the books either so it won’t let me just import them from the Booksmart Data folder.
Same here. i accidentally moved my data folder, and now it looks like i’m screwed. Any help would be appreciated.
dylan
Hi Dylan, Shelbi, and Virginia,
All of your questions are best handled by our Customer Support team. We really try to avoid answering one-off tech support questions in the blog, because we have no idea what kind of computers you’re on, along with the apps and other system tidbits that we need to know to help you with your individual needs.
Also, Customer Supports answers questions within one business day, and most within a couple of hours. A bit more reliable than waiting for someone in the blog to help you.
Hope this helps. i know Customer Support can get you working again very soon.
– Kathy
I want to make a slide show of my book. How can I get my page files to work in Photoshop. Is there a way to save the pages as jpegs?
I have never had a problem with any book I have ever ordered from Blurb until now.
A very unhappy customer just returned three of four books to me with major printing problems in two books and binding breaks in three of the four.
The printing problem was a serious 1/8th inch line running horizontally thru 61 pages of one book and 25 pages of another book. The binding breaks caused a page to work it’s way half way out of the book after three viewings.
I have written a letter with an explanation and sent the books back, I hope that someone out there will be able to tell me if there is ever any quick response.?
It seems impossible to contact anyone EVER in this impersonal world we live in today.
Is there a better way to get a problem corrected with Blurb?
Is anyone alive?
-Stormi
I have spent two days with my ISP timing out on me …… it may be counter to your model, but it’s holding up me buying books from you!!
If this happens often, perhaps there is a philosophically correct and economically poor model in place. In this economy better the money than the model.
As a tech guy, just write the file, and let me FTP it, then my FTP program can deal with the drops and restart correctly, the blub software sucks at restarts.
I’m on this thread, so now I will just move the book, then try to steal the bandwidth from the office!
Dave
PDF export of some kind is a MUST. How am I supposed to show what I’ve done to a client before it goes to print? I am NOT going to ask a corporate client to download a large app they aren’t familiar with and don’t otherwise need, then ask them to do an import they don’t have a clue how to do, just so they can look at what I’ve done on their behalf. And many corporate IT departments simply do not allow users to add apps to their computers, so even you’re current “solution” is a non-starter. This model is NOT working, guys. I need to be able to show what I’ve done to someone else. I need to be able to do it without them downloading a proprietary application.
As a wedding photographer, I agree with others who have suggested that Blurb could benefit from making a Flash or PDF version the books available to the book author.
It would also be nice if there were a way of adding file names to layouts without having to type each one in. This would be a handy tool for Proof Book production.
How can I share my book file with other to view. I do not want them to have the ability to modify the book, only view it. Can I email the file for them to view, even if they don’t have BookSmart installed on their computer? HELP.
Mila
Good for “export!!!” but if you’ve already published your book it will NOT export/ you can click on it but nothing happens.
John
I think it has been well established that the omission of “proofing” functionality is a deal breaker for mainstream photographers working with clients.
The addition of this functionality would mean a huge increase in orders for the company. We look forward to it’s arrival!~
Could someone please clarify the use of the BookSmartData folder to backup my books? I see some recommendations to do just this but the Help files and this Blog also recommend exporting the books and backing that up to disc. In fact, there is one post in which the person states that the BookSmart program will not recognize the books once the data folder is restored. Is this true? It is a lot easier to backup the BookSmartData folder in my documents periodically than it is to first go through the export/backup process from within the program.
This programe is crap!! Can anyone tell how I can open my book, when I down to another computer. I downloaded from BLURB on to my ladtop - it just jums the system when I try to open my book?
Charles. I did the same thing you did and have had no problems. Upload your saved book onto your Desktop (so you can find it) in your laptop, and then open Booksmart. Then when inside Booksmart, go to File, and Import Book. Find your book on your desktop and Import it. Good luck. :-)
Hi Laurie. Good - of you to answer! When I open (Booksmart) on my laptop, “Open existing book” the icon is already entered and the whole programe jam’s, I have to reboot and can not get to my imported book - Desktop - or - no - Desktop? Complants come in from all fronts regarding this programe: from the quality of the finished product - problem with the RGB transfer. The image size of the finished article is about 15% smaller. And, from all the notes above, plently of disatisfied users. These books are not cheap and the service received from some UK users - leaves a lot to de desired. I’m a photographer and my book was not intended as a joke - which is more than I can say regarding aspects of this programe! I’m dreading - when it’s time to “Download”? Thank you again, Laurie - for your time. Regards Charles.
I think in concept Book Smart is an excellent idea however, in execution its…lets just say that program on my 1984 Amiga 500 out performs your program. Perhaps if you hired programmers with solid universal binary experience you’d have a great product.
i am trying to create a family cookbook with relatives across the country. it seems it would be so much easier if they could just access my acct with the same password and id to put in their recipes and not duplicate some of mine. having to create another cd and everything is way complicated. wish you would make this process easier. i’m trying to figure out another way to do this project now that is simpler and more streamlined.
I am trying to back up my books tonight before downloading and installing the latest version of booksmart, and the software simply won’t allow me to do this. I have followed the instructions on your site; they don’t work.
I’m convinced - that only retards or failed software designers work for ‘BLURB’. I’ve just downloaded the latest version of this crap program - the second so called upgrade in as many weeks! I do not believe the so called inprovements made to the writing software - its still as bad as ever - and I’ll be damed, if I can see any inprovements?
Dear Miss Linda of July 1. You have all my sympathy - may be you should quite while your still ahead! You use the word (books) and not ‘book’! Poor you!!
1. Would like a simple export for mac seems to only exist on PC
2. Would like to have two separate books open at same time.
3. Ultimately RE-produce an existing book at a different size or at least something to facilitate the process.
4. Wrap the cover image front to back including spine on all books
5. Include a “magazine” like product.
Thanks
Steve
I am making a few books using book smart. I would like to transfer some of the pages that I made in one book to another book. Is there a way that I could do this? I have a family book and then one for my little girl. It seems silly that I have to create a page for both books when using the same pictures and same text. Any suggestions?
Back in 2007 I asked if books could be stored on a drive of our choice, not on C: and a number of others seconded that idea. Blurb support said that was a good idea. See the postings above.
But I haven’t seen any confirmation that capability is actually included in release 2.5. Can you tell me if it is?
I am trading in my junk of a PC for a MAC, is there any way the exported/back up version of my book will transfer to my MAC?? If not is there any other option to make this happen?
This isn’t working for me and I’m moving to another publishing site as a result. I can’t print to proof a 100 page document/photos on my home printer and there is no way to upload it to a cheap b&w kinko’s type printing service to create a proof. I don’t care about the logo/watermarking stuff, just about being able to print a document without using my little home printer. Grrr.