Let's Hear it (Again) for Blooks

Another nice article on blooks, this time by USA Today's Janet Kornblum who dropped me a note after reading the entry I wrote on them the other day.

She quotes Jeff Jarvis, a former editor and publisher who writes the blog BuzzMachine. He says that he growing popularity of blooks shows that blogs are:

the new means to discover talent and new voices that couldn't break into the world of publishing before ... You can go create a property and a voice and an audience without having to go through the publishing meat grinder.

I also liked the quote from Julie Powell who wrote Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen:

The blog readers were almost in a way co-writers — certainly inspirations ...

Because I think that this what makes blogs special - that they are a dialogue, and that your readers influence what you write about and how you write it. (I've learned this - and yes, it surprised me!)

In the normal run of things writing is a lonely occupation, but blogging is extremely social. You can gauge the effect of your words on your audience very quickly.

And of course blogs contribute to the whole dialogue on issues, drawing from the mainstream press and in turn contributing to the discourse of the mainstream press.

I'm always happy to read articles like this which underline the validity of blogging and which for a little while at least counterbalance all those sneery voices which tell you blogging isn't something you should be wasting your time on.

Cooking the Blooks

Marisa very kindly forwarded a press release a couple of days ago regarding the shortlist for the Blooker Prize.

Now if the idea of blooks (self-published books based on blogs) seemed a little ... self-indulgent ... when I first mentioned the idea some time ago, the quality of contenders for the prize has certainly made me think again.

Belle du Jour is, of course, up for the award. (Who could not want to read a memoir written by an intelligent, articulate hooker?) Apparently a film (or should that be a flook - film of the blook?) is in the pipeline.

And so is a book that I've been looking forward to reading since I first heard about it. Julie and Julia:365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen - part cookbook, part memoir, it's the story of Julie Powell's personal cuisinery journey through every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and how in the process she saved her soul. The book which has garnered excellent reviews grew from a blog on the salon.com website.

Another contender for the Blooker include Egg, Bacon, Chips And Beans, a quirky tribute to greasy spoon caffs by US-based Brit, Russell Davies. And here's his blog.

The landscape of publishing is changing for sure, becoming through initiatives like this more democratic, more meritocratic, more ground up. And of course all the time my mind is working (as I hope yours is too, dear reader) ... might I also have it in me to be a blauthor?

If the answer could be yes, start here.

Thumbs Up for Self-Publishing

Judging by the number of self-publishing websites, it may not be long before we reach the tipping point of mass adoption.

Victor Keegan road-tests self-publishing websites in the Guardian and declares that the mainstream publishing companies could be "in line for a much needed shock". He is impressed with Lulu, and Publish and Be Damned. He also mentions the all-inclusive package offered by Grosvenor House.

Closer to home, we have Gary Gan and his G&L Solutions, of course.

Related posts:

MPH Writer's Circle (16/1/05)
Self-Publishing (31/3/05)
The Underground Route to Self-Publishing (14/6/05)
The Blooker Prize (4/12/05)
The Power to Publish (21/12/05)

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.