Sunday, December 04, 2005

The Blooker Prize

On paper it is a terrible idea: let every have-a-go writer on the planet publish whatever they fancy and give it all away free. No editors, no agents, no fees, no quality control. ... But a new generation of diarists, satirists, polemicists and poets have made the idea work precisely because they dispensed with paper.
That's us, of course, the 19 million bloggers rampaging across the wilderness of cyberspace.

A new book 2005 - Blogged: Dispatches from the Blogosphere edited by Tim Worstall brings together extracts from some of the best British blogs in "a decent attempt to box the unruly new medium in the trusted packaging of an old one". Read the Observer review here.

Incidentally, books based on blogs are called blooks, and there is even a newly created Blooker Prize.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

at silevrfish there is a blook on malay blogs. just ordered one.

how was party? we ended up uh... put 5 men, and 5 women in one room and what do you get? all of them watching bollywood's sexy sexy music videos. sigh... so tragic.

Anonymous said...

"a decent attempt to box the unruly new medium in the trusted packaging of an old one"

What a nice way to say "a decent attempt to make money from what you can get for free" :)

bibliobibuli said...

ms d - didn't know there was a blook on malay blogs ... interesting! the party wasn't too exciting after you left (you life and soul of type!) ... sounds like you had fun ...

anon - that too i'm sure ...

Leon Wing said...

Ms d, you missed the Bob Dylan renditions and haka performances. I've seen, live, an actual haka from the real All Blacks before, but sitting in the stadium, you cannot beat the amplified sounds we received from the blows of the rhythms loud and clear - my table was the front row seats! And just before we all - I, Eric, Ashok and Sharanya - said good night to our host and hostess, the DJ started playing Bowie's Let's Dance.

bibliobibuli said...

yeah okay miss d ... it sort of got wild once the artistic intellectual types (apart from leon and eric)exited and the rugger buggers took over ...
yes, there were some surreal moments sat night, sun morning ...

(i had asked for a male stripper to jump out of the cake but sadly didn't get one). abby consoled me by saying that most male strippers are gay anyway and telling me about her close encounter ...

Anonymous said...

What a nice way to say "a decent attempt to make money from what you can get for free" :)

Hear, hear. So the bloggers don't get a single penny from the sales of the book. Why not? Never trust the smiling man with the contract and the pen.

Anonymous said...

"So the bloggers don't get a single penny from the sales of the book."

No no no: Friday Books (no, me neither) give you a free copy of the book, though. Woo hoo! (doffing cap to friday books)thank you, kind sirs!!(/doff)

bibliobibuli said...

adderley - you're one of the bloggers in the book? (and here's the link btw - sorry i didn't slip it in before)... well done! (shame you didn't leave a link to your blog) ... i think i'd like to buy this book anyway ...

and wouldn't it be a good idea to do something like this for the blogs in english here too?

sky said...

*gets out of lurker mode*

Probably something like these:
http://warmbodies.fil.ph

*goes back to lurker mode*

bibliobibuli said...

thanks for the link, sky ... a very interesting compilation and i will go back and read more ...

so you're from the philippines ... someone i met on my trip?? (you don't have to answer, can happily lurk) ...