Blook: Bridge between Blogger and Author

I love the quote that forms the title of this post! It comes from an interview at Spork Nation with Ryan Zeinert, author of 65 Poor Life Decisions. The blook is a collection of essays from Zeinert's blog "The Communist Dance Party."

thecdp: Well, I started the blog because I wanted to write books some day.... I consider this book the bridge between blogger and author, and I want to move further over to the 'author' side of the equation. Keep the blog, but separate the two just a little bit more. My next book will be 100% new, non-blog material. Which should be a lot more appealing to...well, everyone.

JT: Got it. Oddly enough, I started Spork Nation because I was trying to write a book, and felt it was too disjointed, so it became a blog.

thecdp: Blogs are a good way to get your head on straight. Write about the little things, notice the big things and expand on them thusly. It's also a good way to see what's working and what isn't. Instant feedback.

Zeinert was also asked "How hard was it, going back over old essays, and picking what to keep, what to cut, and what to rewrite?" I was surprised and not surprised at his response:

"It was mixed. I had over 650 essays and 1800 pages to sift through, and I ended up with 65 essays on 298 pages. So yeah, it was a huge undertaking. There were essays that got cut just seconds before I sent the book to print. At the last second, I got a bad feeling about them, so we had to update the cover, title, PDF, everything. Just the sifting and cutting took a couple of months. The editing took almost less time."

That's the condensed version of what he went through! For a really thorough look at what he did, see his post "3 Days Until Doomsday." Here are some of the highlights:

• He shut down the blog for one month
• cutting and pasting was "like having to watch home movies of yourself at your most awkward and annoying"
• "The goal was to take the best of the CDP and make it better; polish everything up, re-write passages and perfect each essay to resemble exactly what I was trying to convey"
• drafts of 75 essays (350 pages) were sent out for review by friends and family
• "New introductions were written for every essay, all-new forewords and afterwords were added"

Then Zeinert wrote something that I don't understand, but then I didn't self-publish using Lulu as he did. I'm guessing that Deborah Woehr or another of my readers might be able to shed some light on this.

"For the first time in this journey, the publishing process was officially out of my hands. I had done everything I could do with it on my own; I designed the cover, threw a ton of money into self-publishing fees and sent it off to the printing press. For the next few weeks, I had to wait for the US Government and the fine folks at Lulu.com to make sure that everything met the criteria for self-publishing rights and distribution. I guess they don't want something available through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble that's terrible, but if you've been to either retailer lately, they clearly haven't been doing a very good job of keeping the turds out."

As for site statistics of the blog, which we've looked at before as a predictor of blookability, Zeinert said in an interview at Dane101.com: "The first month, we got 50 total hits. Last month, we received 13,000."

I hope he remembers to enter the Blooker competition when it's finally announced.