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Markets I will bet against
Blurb.com, a self-publishing startup, will invite 600 bloggers this week to test out its new service by creating a free bound copy of their blog. It's a fresh shot across the bow to traditional publishers in an industry already facing disruptive changes from digital giants Google and Amazon.
Here is the story. Not every blogger book has been a big hit, in part because the two media are so different. Blogs are sequential, rely on daily freshness, an ability to send around links, and they are best consumed in small bits. A snarky bit which is excellent in a daily blog cannot be repeated verbatim in a book, especially not every fourteen pages. Translating good blog ideas into book format is best done by people who...have experience writing books, or who have journalistic experience, not by people who have large staplers.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 31, 2006 at 11:40 AM in Books, Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
I don't think it's going to fly to the big time. $47 for a book 150-200 pages? Actually, in a perverse sort of way, things like this and other self-publishing portals do serve a purpose in keeping a lot of folks from flooding the established markets with manuscripts. Not many people have the patiencce forthe submission process.
BTW, I love "absolutely free--pay only when you publish." So jeepers, for free you can set up your book and read it on your own computer screen, just like in Word.
Posted by: susan at Aug 31, 2006 12:44:04 PM
I think you are dismissing the idea a little swiftly.
The cost of these books indicates that they are hardly aimed at a mass market and more likely a fairly limited run for friends and family. If each of the bloggers chose only 2 people to buy books for and the basic price for a book is $30 the revenue from the initial 600 alone is close to $36,000 for very little work! Even if costs are 60% of revenue (which I doubt) its still a nice place to be for a publisher.
Because it is aimed at low run, high quality and high prices, I think Blurb is nicely positioned.
Eoin
Posted by: Eoin Purcell at Aug 31, 2006 12:45:24 PM
I was actually thinking of getting my brother a bound copy of his blog for last Christmas, bearing out the idea that it's a good low-run high-quality offering.
In general, though, I agree about blogs needing editing to work in book form. Case in point is Riverbend, which is fascinating on a week-by-week basis as perspective on current events but a bit wearing at book length. Publishers need to do more than cut and paste and choose a different font.
Posted by: william at Aug 31, 2006 1:07:13 PM
"He took me into his library and showed me his books, of which he had a complete set."
-- Ring Lardner
Posted by: Name withheld by request at Aug 31, 2006 4:28:25 PM
I would pay about £20 for this, albeit that I am the kind of person who pays for other people to put music on my iPod from my CDs, which is what this looks like; paying someone to print out your blog and take it down to the binding shop.
Posted by: dsquared at Sep 1, 2006 2:51:56 AM
"Not every blogger book has been a big hit, ..."
Remove the word 'blogger' and you have an understatement, to put it mildly.
"... in part because the two media are so different."
Yes, and not every book is a hit because the one media is so self-similar.
I expect the average blog self-republished as a book to be no worse than the average self-published book. Nothing to see here.
Posted by: Mike Linksvayer at Sep 1, 2006 2:55:34 AM
A snarky bit which is excellent in a daily blog cannot be repeated verbatim in a book, especially not every fourteen pages. Translating good blog ideas into book format is best done by people who...have experience writing books, or who have journalistic experience, not by people who have large staplers.
Gee Tyler, speaking of snarky :)
As it stands, the market is limited due to pricing and page count. I checked it out when I first heard about it because I think it's a great idea. I am a published author yet I think that an edited version of my blog would be a great book too, particularly because many of the comments contain a lot of additional reference material. In that respect and because my blog is so topic-tight, a book of my blog would be a useful product for my market -in many respects, a joint writing project encompassing the experts I know who don't have the time, means or venue for publishing their own work. In fact, many of my visitors have asked me to consider publishing a yearly edition of the blog well before I heard of this particular company (there are at least four that I know of). I think it really depends on the blog, the topic and the quality of the expression of both.
Posted by: Kathleen Fasanella at Sep 1, 2006 2:21:54 PM
I agree with Tyler, but I'm not sure book buyers do. If anything, the market seems to favor books that come in nice little bites. Even Freakonomics lacks an overarching thesis.
Posted by: Virginia Postrel at Sep 2, 2006 12:36:11 AM
People seem to like listening to me for ten minutes at a time. If I stand and talk to them for hours they get bored and wander off. This is surely nothing new?
Posted by: Stuart at Sep 2, 2006 10:14:23 AM
I think overall this will be a failure. There are too many people with untrue "facts" and stories they like
to tell so i think the credibilty would be a big issue. This obviously is not aimed for the mainstream market it is aimed for a few people who share the same ideas and a few family members maybe. There are too many good authors out there that are trying to make a profit that will not subject their writings into a blog free to the public. Although
I do think it is an intresting idea I think it needs some work.
Posted by: Brandon at Sep 5, 2006 6:39:53 PM
I think by releasing a book on blogging, the very purpose and concept of blogging could be defeated.
Blog is coined from -A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is a type of website where entries are made (such as in a journal or diary), displayed in a reverse chronological order. (Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog)
Why would someone ever attempt to publish something that has very limited utility? Since the utility is limited, the demand may also be limited. For such a thing like “blogging “,where updates happen every minute from any and every corner of the world, blogs in a book may turn out to be a total failure.
Blogging, in my opinion would always be in demand as it is an online activity and people are connected this way nowadays! Blog provides a platform for one to express his or her views, opinions etc. ‘Blogging’ came as a fad, but has certainly stood the test of time and is widely used for bigger and better reasons. And as posted by Tyler Cowen “Blogs are sequential, rely on daily freshness “, which the blog made into a book certainly cannot offer.
Another thought is, a book containing blogs is certainly not an alternative or supplement to the online blogging.So the latter will be the source used by people .The book might be read once and after that it would be obsolete. Compiling a book of blogs might not be a very successful venture. It would require time, effort and money but might not be as fruitful as expected. I would prefer reading the responses or comments to this blog regularly, rather than just reading my blog in a book.
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