Pondering the Blook
By Therese Walsh | November 14, 2006 |
I was wandering the world wide web months back (pre Nano, naturally) and stumbled upon a whole new word: Blook. What was it? This from Lulu Blooker Blog:
blook (bluk), n. A printed and bound book, based on a blog (cf. web log) or web site; a new stage in the life-cycle of content, if not a new category of content and a new dawn for the book itself.
Hmm, interesting. I thought briefly about whether or not I could envision a Writer Unboxed blook. It could be nice, helpful even, to have all our favorite and most useful posts and interviews in one spot. On the other hand, why, really, would anyone want to buy a blook of posts when–with a little patient digging–you can read those same posts for free on the blog? How popular could this “new dawn for the book itself” be?
This from an article at Business Week Online:
Books based on blogs — dubbed “blooks” by Jeff Jarvis, a journalist and creator of the popular BuzzMachine.com — are making a big splash in book publishing. These range from novels to comics to memoirs… Some begin as blogs read by hundreds of thousands of loyal fans, land at well-known publishers, and end up sold through huge retailers from Barnes & Noble to Amazon.com. Others are self-published compilations. All may mean big changes in the way ideas find their way into print.
Recently our editor friend from Flogging the Quill, Ray Rhamey, asked about blooking. Would you be interested in a Flogging the Quill book? My immediate answer was YES. Because pretty much everything that comes out of FtQ is gold, and it would be helpful to have that gold in portable form for easy perusing.
So I’m asking–and Ray’s asking: what do ya’ll think of blooks? Hype or help? Would you use one? How?
Therese Walsh (she/her) co-founded Writer Unboxed in 2006 and is the site’s editorial director. She was the editor of WU’s only book, Author in Progress, and runs the Writer Unboxed UnConference.
Her second novel, The Moon Sisters, received starred reviews and was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and Book Riot.
Learn more about Therese on her website, and sign up for her newsletter to be among the first to hear about any new projects.
Blook, eh? Sounds like a good idea for the mega blogs.
I can definitely see the value to this. To me, there’s something about holding a book in my hand and thumbing through the pages as opposed to reading it on the screen.
I’ll be interested in what people have to say about a blook from FtQ–I just sent out book proposals to publishers (have amicably parted from my agent).
The title is “Jump-start Your Novel with Kitty-cats in Action.” It’s subtitled “And keep the pages turning with coaching from Flogging the Quill.”
The book, as proposed, would have “lessons” and a number of the edits I do of samples of writing, which I think are as instructive as the lessons and essays.
So if you think you’d like an FtQ blook, let me know.
Ray
http://www.floggingthequill.com