The coming age of booklogs
In short, booklogs are excerpts from books posted as blog articles and readers rate them, add comments a nd so on, sort of Youtube for books. Again, copyright issues will be sent for a toss but I think writers of controversial and racy paragraphs will find it easy to develop a following.
Booklogs will be fueled by Amazon's e-book reader Kindle, which is still in its early days. Steven Johnson writes about
booklogs in the Wall Street Journal:
As the writer and futurist Kevin Kelly says, "In the new world of books, every bit informs another; every page reads all the other pages."
Labels: blogging, blooks, booklogs, trends
Pulitzer for Blogs: Revisting the Blogitzers
In April 2007, I wrote about the idea of
Blogitzers - Pulitzers for Blogging. Now that the Pulitzer Prizes in the United States have
announced they will accept entries from Online Only publications, I paid my old post a visit. I had written that if we had the
Blogitzers up and running, we should have awarded the following:
- the blogger who helped bring Don Emus to book.
- the Newsvine user who brought the Virginia Tech shooting to front page.
- The blogger in India who brought attention to the alleged misdeeds at a supposed premier business school.
- Bloggers in Egypt who are standing up to the dual opposition of an autocratic government and muslim hardliners.
- Bloggers who converted their blogs into successful books.
- Blogger who helped bring a new music talent in public eye.
How I would promote the Blogitzers:This would encourage people to go after the real stories rather than indulging in navel-gazing political stories and odd opinion stuff. We have enough of the Friedmans and Gladwells.
I know doing investigative journalism involves time and money but at least this would be a start. I would go ahead, tie up with Lulu.com or Blurb.com, build a separate site for the
Blogitzers and sell books based on the award winning stories written by the winners and ensuring that winners got the maximum money from sale of their books, avoiding as much middleman-related grime as possible.
I would love to listen to what you think about the
Blogitzers.
Labels: Blog networks, blogitzers, blooks, books, pulitzers
How to turn your blog into a book
Consider this as Part 2 of my post on turning Blogs into Books. In Part 1, I wrote that
when your blog could be turned into a book,
it is a sign that you indeed have a quality blog.
Hillary Clinton wrote, "It takes a Village".
First you need a good blog before you turn into a good book.
That is a double whammy. Fear not, help is here.
Here's a non-nonsense
10 step method to achieve author stardom by first creating a quality blog and then turning into a quality book:
1.
Read blogs of people who have done it: postsecret.blogspot.com, Nicholas Carr (roughtype.com), Jeff Jarvis (buzzmachine.com), dailycandy.com, JuliaandJulia -365 days 354 recipes. and other topical gems.
2.
Pick a topic: Use tools like
Google Suggest, Google
Trends for ideas if you haven't gotten one. Use Google
Adwords Keyword Selector Tool to get an idea of search volume and related keywords for your chosen topic. I know this is the SEO way of selecting a topic but you asked for it. I like to think even Malcolm Gladwell uses this method to write his breezy non-fiction. The Keyword Selector Tool will also give you an idea about the profit potential of your keywords.
3.
Create a mind map. If you do not have any Mind-Mapping software,
draw a Mind Map on a blank sheet of a paper.
Start with the topic in a circle in the center. Draw other circles with related ideas and join these with the main circle. Each one of these is a chapter. Draw other circles from each circles. Each of these is a part of the Chapter and so on...
Tip: Keep a
Writing Calendar on hand - to chart out your work and to cover what you write on a daily basis. A sample writing Calendar has
weekdays on the X-axis and keyword/s on the Y-axis.
4.
Write to-the-point articles on each of the topic on the mind map. To make sure you write original posts, do a search for the topic/sub-topic/Chapter title on
Google Blogsearch and
Google to see what has already been written about it before. It will help you tailor unique content.
5.
Write in a warm, engaging manner. Don't be preachy, don't be too casual.
Be controversial. Be upfront. Rather than spouting simple, banal and unoriginal pontifications, practice the
'Show, don't tell' method of writing.
6.
Make sure you have covered all the topics that you noted on the Mind Map sheet.
If you have written about 100 posts or so on your topic, proceed to fit all that in your book. Only then will you know what you are missing.
7. Show your blog posts to friends, family and colleagues for inputs.
Go the extra mile to solicit comments from readers.
8. Add some more data: Today's readers are spoilt for choice.
The ratio of failure to success in book publishing is very, very high.
Add any extra data you can -
illustrations, infographics, maps, doodles, extensive footnotes and reading lists...whatever that it takes to make it
'special' and stand out in a crowded space.
9. Pitch your book idea to book agents and publishers: Write a brief letter listing out who the target reader is, the sample table of contents, what you will do to promote the book (offline and online) and do not forget to give a backgrounder about your blog, Youtube Videos, presentations, blog traffic, among other things.
Basically, you got to pitch yourself as well.
10. If they publishers/agents seem sluggish to come on to your world-changing idea, publish it yourself: Use services like Cafepress.com or.Lulu.com.
Publishing on Demand (POD) is an idea whose time has come.
Sometimes, you are better with POD, as publishers might be reluctant to print your book just because they fear demand for your book does not run into tens of thousands. POD makes sure that your work remains available at all times.
It is much better that your book for which you labored so hard, is languishing inside a nameless warehouse
( if it hasn't been already pulped).
Bonus: Remember to send me my commission if you make it. :-)
Labels: blogging, blooks, book publishing, publishing on demand, self publishing
The Ultimate test of a quality blog or a website
Can it become a book?
- Like
Dailycandy.com- Like
Postsecret.
- Like
Indexed.
- Like
Julia and Juila - 365 days, 524 recipes.
- Like Pitchfork's
Pitchfork 500- Our Guide to the Greatest songs from Punk to the present.
These are 5 of my favorite examples. You can find more
here.
Seth Godin always uses his blog to write a number of posts expounding upon an idea he is working.
Nicholas Carr wrote
"The Big Switch" along similar lines, exploring the pluses and minuses of a Google-dominated online world.
Jeff Jarvis is anti-Carr, in the sense that he is all praise and nothing else for Google and wrote a number of great posts upon the idea - Link Economy, What Would Google do? - before he came out with his
"What would Google do?" book.
Darren Rouse is well positioned to bring out a book based on his excellent
"Digital Photography School" blog.
Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration(labnol.blogspot.com) can hope to make a success out of a Tips and Tricks book titled
"Digital inspiration - 101 ways to use Digital tools successfully".I am sorry to report that my Blog Mediavidea can't be turned into a book.
Mediavidea is more than 2 years old now and there are more than 400 posts but
there is no single focus.Unless you consider New Media which is too big a topic for a guy for me to cover.
Rather than being an armchair warrior, I hope to prove that
Bighow, the online publishing platform works. But, that is another story.
So, tell me: Can you turn your blog/website into a book?
Labels: bighow, blogging, blooks
7 Perspectives on Andrew Keen's hatred for User Generated Content
What makes Andrew Keen so angry at the 'ameteurish' web 2.0 people? There was this Indian film from the 80s and I paraphrase, in Hindi:
"Andrew Keen ko gussa kyon aata hai?"
The top reasons, in no particular order:
1. Some say Andrew Keen still hasn't gotten over the failure of Audiocafe.com, a casualty of the 2000 web bubble burst.
2. Some say Andrew Keen is unhappy because someone deliberately posted this on his bio entry on Wikipedia, which incidentally is one of his favorite hate objects:
"he was also "a child actor who found fame in a series of soup commercials" (not correct)
3. Some say because his blog is not as famous as others, he has gotten around to saying that
"bloggers don't read enough". Don't tell this to Robert Scoble. I wonder what the people at Google Reader, Feedburner and Bloglines make of this gem.
4. Others point out that maybe Andrew Keen does not consume mainstream/old media fodder and that is why he can't find any fault with it, despite of Fox news, Jason Blair and other old media luminaries.
Or maybe someone paid him well to ignore the
corrupt and compromised part of old media and do a hatchet job on new media instead.
5. Or, maybe Andrew Keen was a librarian or an editor in his previous life.
6. Some say Andrew Keen wanted to become a gatekeeper, ala Old Media, but no one put any grass before him.
7. Finally, Andrew Keen knows the truth but will deny it, for there is no money in truth :
"Amateurs built the ark; professionals built the Titanic"Labels: blooks, citizen journalism, controversey, ethics
Blogs to books, revisited
The second Lulu Blooker
shortlist is out. Instituted by Print on Demand service provider, Lulu,
the award carries a top prize of $10000, out of a total prize fund of $15000.
There is an interesting variety of material on the shortlist, including the cult hit
“My War: Killing Time in Iraq” by Colby Buzell who fought in Iraq, a book even the great, late Kurt Vonnegut liked. There is a book from the Postsecret site and surprisingly, a collection of Seth Godin’s blog posts, ebooks, articles, etc. I thought Seth was a mainstream speaker cum author with a blog that does not allow comments.
The nature of blooks is the same as that blogs:
- As blog posts in print, only a few of the blooks are good enough for widespread reading and dissemination in all other forms.
- Many are plain rewritings of existing matter.
- Only a few bloggers/blookers break out into solid mainstream acceptance.
Critics of the blogging, user-generated content and citizen journalism ( and blooks, by implication) phenomenon, acting as
defenders of the Gatekeepers are quick to dismiss them as
‘amateurist’, unedited, uncensored, often anonymous content that come along with the added danger of spreading disinformation.
To all those who fear that the end of newspaper & book editors, film and TV bigwigs, creative talent agents, and other ‘victims’, I can say only two things:
Democracy and quality will out.
The
democratic potential of user-generated content, blooks in this case, cannot be overlooked.
It has been said,
“The more people blog or write about something, the more sides to the story you get to know about.”There is something quite Voltairish about this truth.
"I might disagree with you but I will defend to death your right to say it."When you are talking about quality, I hope the critics do not want every blogger to achieve the hoary heights of New Yorker writers, among other things.
Quality is always rare and it eventually shines out. If it doesn't, perhaps it needs some serious Google love :-)
Quality bloggers have started writing for big papers, even here in India, I am sure things are same everywhere.
If you are worrying about the
spread of disinformation, I suggest you worry about the reader who tends to make up his mind after reading just one article or two, in this age of information glut.
Google the topic, if you
'needed' to know more.
Why are critics afraid of anonymity?You will have to live in countries like Iran and Egypt to find that out.
Maybe the critics are pure golden-hearted souls who have never blown the whistle, said what is right and true, disagreed with the boss and the organization, and have managed to keep the job and neck intact.
Things to expect from blookers in futureMore exposes:Where are the books about Gonzalez case, the Don Imus case, the IIPM scandal in India?
All these stories were raked up bloggers and I am sure there more issues and stories waiting for the adventurous citizen journalist in his neighborhood.
More experience reporting:More Iraq war accounts from soldiers, accounts of jailed bloggers in Egypt, live accounts from political campaign trails, etc.
Labels: blogging, blooks, citizen journalism
