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Terry Whalin over at The Writing Life has a great post headlined "A Case For Blogging Book Authors." He presents an excerpt from author Steve Weber's Plug Your Book!. The man is an authority on his subject, and it's reflected in the excerpt.
Nurul Halawati Mohamad Azhari over at the Malaysian National News Service's Bernama.com has an informative, December 28, 2006 post headlined "Blook: New Medium For Creative Writing."
What's a 'blook'? According Azhari, it's "an acronym for 'blog book'. Specifically, blook is a published book whereby its content is derived from a blog," he added.
As much as I read, I'm surprised I hadn't heard of the term before today. Anyway, I learned a lot from the post.
Genevieve Tucker at The Australian has a post in the December 06, 2006, edition on literary blogging. She also offers a list of good lit blogs. To read about them, see "Online, everyone's a critic."
BuzzMachine publisher Jeff Jarvis has posted another installment of his continuing "discussion about the future of books." I've enjoyed reading them. In fact, I enjoy reading Jeff's blog.
The former "TV critic for TV Guide and People, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday editor and associate publisher of the NY Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner" is a creative thinker.
"Without his blog, Chicagoan Andy Wibbels never would have written a book," Knight Ridder Correspondent Alex L. Goldfayn reports in an article I read in the May 18, 2006 edition of the Belleville (Illinois) News-Democrat.
According to Goldfayn, "Wibbels, 31, who writes a blog that teaches blogging for small businesses (www.andywibbels.com) was contacted by an editor who had been reading his blog. The editor was from publishing giant Penguin."
"Out of the blue, without an agent, without a book proposal, the editor contacted me and asked if I would like to write a book," he quoted Wibbels as saying.
Noted Goldfayn: "That book came out in April. It's called "Blog Wild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging", and it's a quick, relatively low-tech guide to blogging for small companies. As Amazon.com's best-selling book on blogs, it's performing well, too."
For more, see "Blog for small outfits leads to book deals."
Dan Brown, Online Editor for the London Free Press, has a review of "David Kline and Dan Burstein’s 402-page-long tome, blog! — which isn’t all that good, but it did provoke some thoughts."
Those are Brown's words. I haven't read it so I can't judge the book.
This is the same Kline and maybe the same Burnstein that contributed to The Call here in Chicago in the 1980s. Kline went into Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation when very few American reporters were willing to go. We held a lot of conversations during his days in Chicago. I doubt he would remember them.
Anyway, Brown's review can be found under the headline "How Blogging is Like Baking Bread." Kline blogs at BlogRevolt.com
Kimberly Maul at The Book Standard has a critical assessment of "self-publishing company" Lulu.com's announcement "of the winners of its inaugural “Blooker Prize,” for books derived from blogs."
As Maul noted, "Overall and nonfiction awards went to Julie Powell [link added], a blogging cook who spent a year of her life trying to crank out all the recipes in Julia Child’s foodie bible, Mastering the Art of French Cooking." See Maul's April 3, 2006 report headlined "This Just In: Punning on British Literary Prize Name Not Enough to Sell Books."
Riverbend, the Iraqi woman who runs the popular Baghdad Burning blog, said in an April 2, 2006, post:
River, who started blogging shortly after the U.S. and Britain's invasion of Iraq in 2003, added: "I’ve been walking around in a bit of a daze since I found out. I feel like it’s all happening to someone else and I have to keep reminding myself of it- while filling the water tanks, while cleaning out the kerosene heaters for storage and while changing the newspaper in the parakeets cage (“I hope you know the person cleaning out your cage is a Samuel Johnson nominee…”)"I was shocked to find out the BOOK “Baghdad Burning” had made the short list for the Samuel Johnson Prize- a prestigious, British award for non-fiction!! I didn’t even know it was on the long list for that award so it came as a huge surprise… I kept telling myself it was some sort of mistake because the other names on the short list are so illustrious but I got confirmation from the British publisher - Marion Boyars.
For more, please see "Nomination..."
"The insider track on blogging is uncovered in the long awaited book ‘Blogwild!’ from blogging expert Andy Wibbels, which is launched on the 6 April 2006," says the UK's OnRec.com website . See "The insider secrets of blogging to build your personal brand and enhance your career success."
Adrian Wooldridge, described by OpinionJournal as "Washington bureau chief of The Economist and the author, with John Micklethwait, of "The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America," reviewed Instapundit proprietor Glenn Reynolds' " An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths," in a piece that appeared in the March 23, 2006, edition of OpinionJournal.
Conclusion: "The David army envisioned by Mr. Reynolds may well, in the long run, end up beating the Goliaths of big media and big government into submission. In the meantime, let's hope for a more modest goal: that it can make them a little better at doing their jobs."
K K Sruthijith of India's DNA Evolution says "Literary blogs — normally content running interviews with little known authors and reviews - are enjoying a sudden spurt in popularity, thanks to two literary controversies." Read "Bloggers damn the million lies man" to see what controversies he's analyzing.
Dan Gillmor, author of "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People," has given "Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, a just released book by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, a valuable endorsement. The former tech journalist for the San Jose Mercury News, who this year will direct the Center for Citizen Media, wrote on January 14, 2006: I read an advance copy and recommend it to business people who want to get a better feel for why business blogging matters.
Scoble, Microsoft's widely read technology 'evangelist," said of the endorsement: "That means more to me than anything. Dan’s one of the main reasons I’m on this journey."
That may be true. But it also means "Naked Conversations" will likely be bought by Gillmor's fans. By the way, there is a Naked Conversation blog.
Something else I learned about Ana Marie Cox after reading Lincoln (Nebraska) Star Journal online editor Steve Smith's January 8, 2005 review of her novel "Dog Days": She is "a graduate of Lincoln Southeast High School."
See Smith's "Going to the blogs: ‘Dog Days’ full of Ana Marie Cox’s usual snark."
Galley Girl Andrea Sachs over at Time magazines has a Q & A with Ana Marie Cox, who "became the talk of the town in Washington, D.C., as the blogger Wonkette, covering politics with a racy edge." See her January 7, 2006 article headlined "Beyond Wonkette."
I hate Cox has stopped blogging. She's really good, However, I'll keeping reading Wonkette because A3G of Underneath Their Robes fame will be one of the two bloggers editing it.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956), described in the January 1, 2006 New York Times "Week in Review" as probably "the premier American social critic of the first half of the 20th century," was "published mainly in The Baltimore Sun, The American Mercury and The Smart Set," as The Times notes. "But," asks Thomas Vinciguerra, deputy editor of The Week, " if he had flourished in the age of computer keyboards, would he have dispensed his crusty wisdom on a Web log?"
Is this worthy of speculation? By the way, you may have to register to read "Find Mencken at nature-abhors-a-moron.com" online.
Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine has a perspective on "Amazon Connect," Amazon.Com's blogging site for authors, that Amazon boss Jeff Bezos should embrace. Jarvis wrote on December 27, 2005:
Amazon has started authors blogging on its site, which is a fine thing. But they could do so much more. Though it is a leader in innovation on the Internet, Amazon is not keeping up with the distributed nature of the beast. It is still building what it builds on Amazon. It is thinking like a big, old store with walls around it, albeit virtual ones. But Amazon could be doing so much more to take advantage of the fact that its customers are in control. Especially because they don’t depend on ad revenue in their environment, they could find many more ways for customers and authors to help push product from wherever they are online.
Jarvis, as he often does, made "a few suggestions," and commented "on the blogs themselves." See "Hey, Amazon: Think distributed." He makes sense. He usually does about 95 percent of the time.
The New York Times' Edward Wyatt reported December 27, 2005 that in November 2005 Amazon.com launched a series of blogs for authors under a program "called Amazon Connect." The Times said it was begun "to enhance the connections between authors and their fans - and to sell more books - with author blogs and extended personal profile pages on the company's online bookstore site."
"So far," The Times said, "Amazon has recruited a group of about a dozen authors, including novelists, writers of child care manuals and experts on subjects as diverse as real estate investing, science, fishing and the lyrics of the Grateful Dead." See "A Chance to Meet the Author Online." May require registration.
I just got around to reading Pamela Paul's December 18, 2005 essay in The New York Times headlined "What Are the Blogs Saying About Me?" Paul, described at the end of her essay as "the author, most recently, of "Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families," said:
For some authors, blogs provide the first indication that someone other than family members and people who owe them favors are reading their books.
The comments she gathered from several authors about how they handle what people write about them and their work are quite revealing.
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