A good friend who works at Blurb told me things have been hopping with a huge surge in orders for the holidays; he barely has time to breathe. This bit of news reinforces my belief that new media don’t kill old media, but rather that old media adapt—and, in this case, integrate.

In case you haven’t heard of Blurb, the online service provides you with the tools you need to publish a book. Picture books are immensely popular—weddings, parties, Bar Mitzvahs and the like. Blurb offers a couple pre-formatted templates for picture books featuring your dog or cat. But people also are producing books of poetry, cookbooks, and other content. Blurb also lets you “slurp” your blog or Flickr photos directly into a book.

The heart of Blurb’s operation is the book formatting software you download from the site. Once you upload the output back into your account, you select the size and type of book you want (hardcover, softcover, etc.) and the quantity. My friend tells me that most orders are for four or five copies—enough to send to family and friends—although many users opt for greater quantities. Those interested in selling their output can make their books available in the Blurb bookstore.

Blurb (based in San Francisco) handles everything internally except the actual printing, which is outsourced.

The increasing popularity of this web-based service flies in the face of the notion that print is dead. In fact, print has plenty of advantages over online content, not the least of which is the high quality with which detailed images can be reproduced. There’s something nice, too, about the tactile sensation of holding a substantial volume in your hands, turning the pages, gazing at high-quality images. Print is also permanent. I can put a book in a bookshelf and it will be there in 10, 20, 30 years. Can you say the same about a website? And let’s not forget: print requires no batteries or AC power.

But production of a book, historically a complex and expensive process, left wannabe authors, poets, photographers and artists with two choices: Find a publisher (at which only a handful of people succeed) or go the vanity press route. Blurb offers a third alternative at a significantly lower price point, and people are opting for it. Why? Because print still rocks and the web makes it a snap to publish.

In other words, the stodgy old medium of print is getting a boost through integration with the web. Now that’s adaptation!

(Incidentally, by way of disclosure, I have no relationship with Blurb beyond knowing a couple people who work there.)