Two-fer -- Losowsky

No less than POD-dy Mouth herself recorded the pitch Andrew Losowsky made for his blook, The Doorbells of Florence. "Here's a book that started with a camera. I was in Florence, Italy one day in 2003, when I noticed a particularly unusual doorbell. I took a photo. Then I saw another, completely different but equally outstanding. "The camera clicked on. Time passed. "And so I had a large collection of doorbells. About a year later, I started to write short stories about the people I thought were living behind each of the doors. With a pitch like that one could wonder why Losowsky self-published.

"Winner of the Blooker Prize for Fiction 2007, Doorbells was featured by the BBC World Service, Radio Five Live, The Sunday Times and more..." (Lulu). No wonder. If nothing else, it's a curiosity. Who knew doorbells could be fascinating? What makes Doorbells a blook (or flicktion as Lulu calls it) is that the 36 photographs were posted to Flickr before Losowsky sat down to write his short stories.

So much for the Blooker Fiction Prize winner. I want to spend some time looking at a second blook, Barçabook, also self-published, but this one is based on a blog.

In January 2003, Andrew Losowsky left his job in London, and moved to Barcelona. He didn't speak the language, knew no-one there, and had only visited for a weekend. Armed with a laptop and a lot of cynicism, this is what he saw (Lulu).

What intrigues me most about the second blook is that it is a re-published affair. This is how Losowsky describes it:

Although Barçablog is no more (archives still here though), why would you want to read on the old-skool web when all of its less mixed-media content, and much, much more is available in the hottest new thing, print? Choose between original 2003 flavour available from CafePress.com (price: $14.50 + p&p) or new, improved 2005 edition from Lulu.com (price $9.99 + p&p). Like New Coke, only not.

[Just a note - remember that BlogBinders, now out of business, was CafePress underneath]

Losowsky gives an entertaining account which compares the two companies superficially. Such as, "It's all there, gloriously adding to the story (and not providing any padding whatsoever to compensate for Lulu's larger page size, oh no certainly not)." If you didn't buy the first one, "Hey, it's cheaper, it's better and is now even available in pdf download!"

Try hard as I might I can't resist adding the real reason behind his decision to republish:

All of this flurry of environmentally unfriendly recycling has been done in the name of the Lulu Blooker Prize. I have an snow angel's chance in hell of winning, of course, but at least I've bothered to lie on the ground and flap my arms and legs about like an idiot. After all of the previous effort, both on and offline, it seemed churlish not to.

This seems to refer to Barçabook but ironically, I couldn't find any trace on Lulu's Blooker Blog that it had been submitted.