For Immediate Release:
January 11, 2007
Contact:
Kathy Bisbee, OurStory
650.691.1725
kathy@wisdomark.com
Life Stories and Family Biographies Available in Professionally Designed Custom Books through OurStory.com and Blurb
Mountain View, Calif. - A new movement in the digital revolution called "life story sharing" has brought together two innovative Web services companies, OurStory.com and Blurb, to offer professionally bound books from online content collected and delivered by OurStory.com. Blurb will print on-demand the online life stories, autobiographical blogs and family history collaborations as created by members of OurStory.com.
As a result of many Baby Boomers now reflecting on their life and legacy, millions of adults want to share their life stories and interesting insights with their children, grandchildren, relatives and friends. Most of these memories and moments are at risk of being lost in shoeboxes in attics or never being recorded or shared.
OurStory.com, an innovative Silicon Valley start-up company, is offering it's unique web site and free online services to address the growing needs of this population. With the new partnership and business cooperation with Blurb, a creative publishing services company, registered OurStory users can now automatically convert their life story content into a professionally designed, bookstore quality books to share with family and friends.
OurStory provides the rich media archive for personalized book content through their centralized web archive where users can sign up for a free account to post photos, videos, writings and memories in a lifelong, dynamic, organized timeline. Guided tutorials, templates and interview questions prompt storytelling, sharing and recollections that engage family and friends to create interactive, "living and breathing" content uploaded onto OurStory.com.
Information and other content such as images and video can be added to tell the story behind the photo. Collaborative storytelling including comments gathered from family and friends by email to add to the overall content that can be made into heirloom-quality, heart-warming and informative books or DVDs, or just stored to be accessed at any time.
"Blurb customers have expressed strong interest in creating personal and family history books, and our publishing service is ideal for preserving and sharing this content," said Eileen Gittins, Blurb's Founder and CEO. "Integrating more deeply with OurStory enables Blurb members to automatically convert their online stories and images into high quality books -- affordably and quickly."
OurStory users can easily turn their stories and images into bookstore quality books using Blurb's free BookSmart software for Macs and PCs. OurStory content is automatically slurped into Blurb BookSmart, allowing members to create a draft book from online content in minutes. A full color hardcover book with custom dust jacket starts at $29.95 (USD), and customers can create books up to 440 pages.
About OurStory
OurStory is a user-generated storytelling web site where your life stories, photos and video can be organized with purpose into a visual timeline to be collaboratively created, shared and preserved in a lasting format; online, in books and on DVDs.
Through privacy controls, email notification, guided templates, and engaging interview questions, OurStory brings together the best of online storytelling, photo sharing and blogging to capture anecdotes, family history and life stories.
Founded by Andy Halliday in June of 2005 and funded by Benhamou Global Ventures, El Dorado Ventures and Venrock Associates, OurStory's free online service is available at www.ourstory.com.
About Blurb
Blurb is a company and a community that believes passionately in the power of books: making, reading, sharing, and selling them. Blurb's creative publishing service is simple and smart enough to make anyone an author -every blogger, cook, marketer, photographer, traveler, entrepreneur, poet, everyone.
Founded by Eileen Gittins in 2004 and funded by Canaan Partners and Anthem Venture Partners, Blurb is bringing book publishing to the masses. Blurb's free BookSmart software runs on a Mac or PC; users pay only when they publish their books. The software is available for download at www.blurb.com.