Julia Powell on Judging Blooks

Julie Powell, author of Julie and Julia which won the first ever Blooker Prize competition, served as one of the judges for the next year's competition. She was interviewed this May by the Inter Press Service News Agency. I've broken her responses to the first question into several pieces, just so you know :-)

IPS: How do you judge a blook differently from a book?

JULIE POWELL: I have to do a couple of passes on each blook in terms of my thinking. Different judges do it different ways for sure. But for me, it had to read as a good book first. To me, the origins of it are secondary to the quality of it as a book.

I question origins a lot here at Blooking Central! Of course, Powell means something else.

I was also very ambivalent about excess "blookiness" or "blogginess". If the strings showed too much, it put me off. You're reading some novel about a 3,500-year-old immortal woman and she talks about how she kept a blog once. Oh god. For me, the fewer mentions of blogs, the better. There was disagreement among the judges on that. A lot of people want to see some sort of creative use of blogging and that translated as really bringing the blog in some obvious way into the narrative, which was not my feeling at all.

Her statements remind me that I should make myself a note to check the library and see if I can find her book to see how bloggy or not it is.

I find it the diplomacy of the following rather amusing in light of Nick Cohen's public dissing of David Wellington's Monster Island.

"There was one judge in particular who we disagreed on everything. One of the books was a zombie novel, and I thought it was great, and this guy thought it was terrible. But one of the things I said is that I was just so relieved that the zombie doesn't keep a blog."

Who knew? Not me.

"On the other hand, the purpose of the Blooker [Prizes] is to advance this idea -- which is a questionable idea in my mind -- that there is a real genre, that this medium has a great
potential to bring books from blogs. So it should come from a blog in a meaningful way."

That's two judges' comments in a week. Want me to try and track down the others to see what they might have said?

Greatest Freelance Writing Tips

Trashionista recently annnounced, "And in blook news...

"Voracious blogger, journalist of much repute and sometime Trashionista reviewer Linda Jones has an upcoming release all about freelance writing, to tie in with her popular blog. It's tongue-in-cheekily called The Greatest Freelance Writing Tips in the World."

Not hard to see the blog-book tie-in considering Jones writes Freelance Writing Tips (jointly with Craig McGinty). Do you think she will be entering it into the Blooker competition? The "tongue-in-cheek" title comes from Public Eye Publications, who "publish & produce a range of informative and fun lifestyle books and DVDs carrying 'The Greatest in the World' brand."

Jones maintains several other blogs, one of which is "You've got your hands full" about twins and triplets. One post caught my eye:
"It's a couple of years since me and Helen Forbes from Tamba [Twins and Multiple Births Association] discussed the possibilty of making some articles available online, and I'd never heard of a blog, back then of course.

Lately, I'd started to post articles that have been languishing on my PC on my work blog when it occurred to me they deserved a space of their own. ... Some of the material here was written during my time as editor for Tamba's Twins, Triplets & More magazine and the odd one or two are from the early days of Twins Club a site which has gone from strength to strength. ... I'll also link to other online articles about multiple births that I've worked on. Inevitably, some links are long lost, but some remain - notably a series of pieces for Babyworld."

I wonder why there is no blook from this blog, don't you?

Surviving Paradise

Being somewhat perversely inquisitive, I hate taking things at face value. If someone told me that pigs do fly, I'd still want to see one before agreeing. Just because a book was entered into the Lulu Blooker Prize competition, doesn't mean it's a blook. At least not for me.

That said, I try my darnedest to track the sources of the blooks I look at here before I apply the label blook. The working definition that I use is the same one the Blooker uses: "A blook is a book with content that was developed in a significant way from material originally presented on a blog, webcomic or other website."

Let me tell you what I found for Surviving Paradise by Michael C. Perkins. It's billed as "DRAMATIC stories and detailed safety tips for swimming, snorkeling, surfing, lava hikes, tour helicopters, flash floods, sharks, tsunamis, and road safety in Hawaii— all in a portable paperback book." I picked up that quote from the website, which was listed as the book's source for the Blooker contest.

As we all know, most websites aren't dated like blogs. But all the posts on the front page of this site ARE dated. I'm close to being convinced this is a blook but I don't see any archives. What I do see is the copyright date for site - 2006. The book was copyrighted 2006. Which came first - the website or the book?

It's not unusual and is, in fact, highly desirable to have a website to market your product. As websites go, Surviving Paradise ranks with the best. It even has a feature called Reader Stories - you can submit yours if you'd like. "If you have a good survivor story to tell, or a useful piece of safety information to share, please post it." If this was in place before the book was written, what a clever way to get content!

But I don't think that's what happened. In "About Surviving Paradise -— The weblog and the book" Perkins, an investigative reporter, says, "I spent two years interviewing experts and digging up all kinds of information on safety in Hawaii. In the process, I found one dramatic story after another. Then I put it all together -— the stories, the advice, the inside scoop -— into one compact book that I believe is the best thing I've ever written."

In other words the evidence suggests that this is not a blook. But I'm not the author and I didn't enter it into the Blooker competition - Perkins would know best and he called it a blook. So there you are.

Here's something else that might strike you as a little unusual. Although Perkins co-authored the bestselling book, The Internet Bubble (HarperBusiness), Surviving Paradise was self-published through Lulu. Why do you think that was?

NaNoWriMo Blooks

My mind is boggled by this Nanowrimo phenomenon. Yes, I mean in general. Although I may give it a try this November. And yes, in particular about participants receiving book deals.

Lani Diane Rich is the first author I'm taking a look at from the list at the Nanowrimo website. Well, deliberately that is. [I had checked to see that Rebecca Agiewich had been a participant] Her novel, Boom! which was written for NaNoWriMo 2002, [and posted online which qualifies it for blookhood], was sold seven months later:

Lani Diane Rich's BOOM (plus an untitled second "chick" novel), a sassy novel about a woman who reinvents herself and her love life using Post-It notes (the first draft was written in 25 days for National Writing Month), to Beth de Guzman at Warner for trade paperback, by Stephanie Kip Rostan at Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world). (Publishers Marketplace)

In an interview at Getting Published Rich reveals that one of the first things she did was join Romance Writers of America and sign up to pitch an agent at the upcoming conference. Then she went to work on bulking up what she called her "50,000 word skeleton." As a trial run she gave it to a friend's agent to read. The agent liked it, sold it. [Rich never got to pitch it at the conference!]

Retitled as Time Off For Good Behavior, it was published in October 2004, and won the Romance Writers of America RITA award for Best Debut Novel eight months later. Her second blook, Maybe Baby, also began life as a Nanowrimo entry.

Dead Cat?

Dead Cat gets $1.25 Million Dollar Book Deal

Whispers of a Blook

Laurie Kingston (Not Just about Cancer) posted yesterday that the deadline for her manuscript is very near. I took a peek in the archives and discovered this:

November 16, 2006
blook!

When I started this blog, I did not anticipate how important the writing it would be to enduring, processing and celebrating my progress through treatment and beyond. I had even less of a sense of what powerful connections it would help me strengthen and create with the people, near and far, who were so central to my survival.

And now, I will turn it into a book (well some of it, at least. One of the tasks ahead of me is to separate the wheat from the considerable chaff) or, more accurately, a 'blook' (a book based on a blog). I still have a hard time believing that anyone would want to read what I have written through the course of the last year, much less publish a book about it.

But I just signed a contract (complete with a 'witness') that commits me to writing and a publisher to publishing.

Normally I would have written to Kingston to ask for details: what was the name of individual who approached her? was it an agent or editor? who's the publisher going to be? is there a working-title? how are the posts being selected? did she dump the blog or is she copying from the screen and pasting into a text document? did she have to do a proposal? will it be just posts or reflections alongside the posts?

But heck, she's got her hands full with getting the manuscript ready to submit! Meanwhile, take a look around her blog and see if you can determine what the publisher found blookworthy.

Bonnie Burton, "Read my book!"

When I read Bonnie Burton's announcement, "Read my book," I had high hopes. Especially since the founder of Grrl.com followed it with, "I've been wanting to say that for 31 years. When I first started writing poems about talking tacos at the age of seven, I was hooked."

Unfortunately the blook to which she refers is not about talking tacos nor is it all Burton's work. It's an anthology called Never Threaten To Eat Your Co-Workers: Best of Blogs (co-edited by Alan Graham, illustrations by John Burton). Will someone please tell me why someone would want to buy a blook of blog posts from a bunch of different authors? Good Lord! Wade your way through the blogroll on a site you like and save yourself the money.

Not that I've read this blook. I haven't. But since I've set myself the task of helping you turn your blog into a blook, I'm duty bound to look at all the blooks I can to see if I can discover any secrets to pass on to you.

There is no secret behind this blook just a lot of hard work. But here's Burton on her task:

"If I had my way, this book would probably be five times the size it is now, and impossible to carry around. (Though it would help with any of those arm lifts at gym!) But I had the daunting task of collecting and reading hundreds of entries from bloggers who wrote about their daily lives as store clerks, forensic morticians, actors, roadies, designers, skate punks, moms, students, international reporters, hackers, lawyers, dog trainers, dancers, librarians, horticulturalists, Washington interns and more."

Maybe she even read your blog!

According to an Amazon reviewer, selections from thousands of blogs read by Burton and Graham were made, then submitted to a panel of three judges. "The highest rated blogs made it into the book, and the blog authors were interviewed. So the book provides you with both blogs and the reality behind the blogs."

I really like to know how the selection of the posts was made. Did the authors read several or a dozen by a blogger before they thought they'd found something special? Was the blogger happy with the choice? Did they get to nominate their own favorite post? How would you do it?

Breakup Babe

Gak! Don't these people have any self esteem?

December 09, 2004 Oh NO! It's OVER! Blogger has dropped the link from its front page, and my hits have dropped precipitously and I was even going to be in a New York Times article about bloggers who got book deals (or some such fluff), and they "dropped" me due to "lack of space." Imagine the thrill yesterday when I get a call from the Times Photo Desk asking me if I want to get my picture taken today. DO I WANT TO GET MY PICTURE TAKEN TODAY? Do birds fly? Does Bush lie! YES OF COURSE I WANT MY PICTURE TAKEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES!

But the photo shoot never happens because I am summarily deleted. HMMPH. All I can say is that those other flash-in-the-pan bloggers better watch the f*ck out, because when I finally do break onto the scene, they're gonna have to run with their little books and hide! Who is more camera-ready, more charmant, more ready to be presented to an adoring public than BB? No one I tell you.

Sheesh! Rebecca Agiewich, who blogged the above, already had a posh deal from Ballantine. But then, who else to write a blook called BreakupBabe, where self esteem or the lack thereof was the crux of the novel? [Even more depressing is that her blog had been listed in MSNBC's "Best of Blogs" about six months after she started and she could still whine.]

BreakupBabe is no simple lift from the blog to print. An interview with Agiewich by Lydia Pottle Currie for Seattle Writergrrls makes that clear:

LPC: When you initially pitched your book idea to agents and publishers, it wasn't immediately snapped up. Did you succeed with an agent as a result of changing your pitch, or did your agent have a different take on marketing your book than you had previously heard?

RA: I changed my pitch. After making the rounds once without success, I spent almost a whole year reworking my proposal and writing some sample chapters. When I was ready to try again, I put out a call for an agent on my blog. One of my readers recommended Elisabeth Weed, who I already knew slightly through my involvement with the Richard Hugo House, and we turned out to be a good fit. I continued my revamp for several months, with Elisabeth's help, before sending out to publishers again.

Ironically, for all that fiddling around with the pitch, her agent encouraged Agiewich to use more of the blog in the book. After selling it to Random House/Ballantine, "my editor at Random House said that she thought the book would be stronger if I used blog posts even more liberally, and asked me to do a rewrite in that format. She liked that rewrite and offered me the contract..."

She had signed to do a memoir -- now she was writing a novel! [There's another great interview about the transition from memoir to novel at SeattlePI.com]

I found one curious item at the Nanowrimo site. Agiewich is listed as one of the authors who participated in Nanowrimo and got a book deal from it. Sure enough, I double-checked the blog and found where she wrote, "I was a winner back in 2002, when I wrote the first draft of BreakupBabe." [You can also read more of Agiewich on writing at her website.]

Mr. Helpful

Okay, I'm not sure that he merits a special heading but I did appreciate his very funny riff on how many blooks Agiewich could milk from her blog.

Shortlisted for the Blooker Prize

Here in her own inimitable style is the BreakupBabe take on being shortlisted:

March 12, 2007
*Newsflash* *Newflash*

BreakupBabe: A Novel is a finalist for the 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize!
If I win that 10K, I could finally buy myself that mail-order husband I've been dreaming about!

But I must not get greedy here. Even if I just won in the fiction category, why I could at least buy myself a new pair of shoes. But no, no. It's not about winning, it's all about gloating! being grateful for the impeccable taste of the Blooker judges who had so many other fine blooks to choose from.

I am so hot humbled.

Thank you, dear judges.

Here's How You Get a Blook Deal

First you guard your identity and begin a truly anonymous blog. Then you write what you know about where you are. In the case of the pseudonymous Accident and Emergency doctor, Nick Edwards, you write in your "Angry Doctor" blog about the National Health Service in the UK.

When a publisher like The Friday Project contacts you, you promptly toss caution to the wind and meet with them in a public place where anyone might see you. Clare Christian at her Girl Friday blog wrote of the meeting:

"I first met Dr Nick Edwards in a cafe early one morning following his last in a batch of long night shifts. I had contacted him after reading his Angry Doctor blog (long since taken down for fear of identification).

"He had brought along some sample writing; pieces that dramatically illustrated the tragedy and trauma of working in A&E, pieces that show the necessary humour needed to work in such an environment and many that railed against the right royal balls-up our government is making of managing the NHS.

"Of course I desperately wanted to publish his book and fortunately for us, Nick agreed to come with TFP. Concerned about his identity being revealed he writes under a pseudonym and there is a clause in the contract that allows him to remove all of my toenails with no anaesthetic should I ever breathe his name.

If you think Christian is exaggerating, check this from The Guardian:

"Edwards says he first started writing in a cathartic blog. It was a way of keeping himself sane after a particularly traumatic cot death, and of preventing his wife, driven to distraction by his nightly rants, from filing for divorce.

"He is also worried that his 258-page flailing of managers, targets and politicians ... might cost him his career if his identity gets out."

But the publicity keeps coming ...

Scott Pack at Me & My Big Mouth had this to say:

In Stitches: The Highs and Lows of an A&E Doctor by Dr Nick Edwards is a funny, witty, moving and somewhat frustrated look at life as an A&E doctor in this country. Many people have seen it is a natural follow up to the hugely successful Blood, Sweat & Tea [also from The Friday Project]. In Stitches is a very different proposition but would definitely appeal to the fans of Tom Reynolds' wonderful book.

Macmillan did a great job selling this in with Waterstone's, Smiths and Borders all supporting it and Amazon and Play also getting behind it. Smiths have also selected if for their Christmas promotion. It was published two weeks ago and has been hanging around the lower reaches of the bestseller charts without any PR or publicity at all. We had to hold off on that stuff because the Daily Mail had bought the serial rights and ran with it on Tuesday. This had an instant impact with the book shooting into the Amazon Top 100 and it is hanging around there nicely as I write.

Old Toad on a Bike

I prefer the term geezer but if you want to call him "Old Toad on a Bike" I won't argue with you. Simon Gandolfi actually refers to himself as "fat old toad" on his blog. Make no mistake, though, at 74 I think he qualifies as a geezer. On the other hand, his motorbike, a Honda 175, is no motorcycle. No wonder that I couldn't find my notes for this blook - I kept searching for cycle. He's currently riding his pizza delivery bike on the second leg of his 66,000 KM tour!

Just last month he sent an email to Clare Christian, MD and Publishing Director of The Friday Project:

"Clare - this second volume seems to be heading into more exciting territory - I got hit by three trucks the day before yesterday and dragged forty metres beneath fender. True, the road was sheet ice and two of the trucks were on the prime mover's trailer, but it still counts as three. I am still trying to come to terms with being alive. My total wounds are a grazed knee and a broken ankle. On the positive side, I have suffered severe back pain for the past four months. The trucks adjusted my spine. I am pain free."

Gandolfi, who has already authored a dozen books, wrote about this new series -- all blooks -- on his blog:

June 25, 2007
OLD TOAD ON A BIKE is the first volume of the travel trilogy and will be published in early February, 2008. ... OLD MEN CAN’T WAIT is the second volume.

THE FRIDAY PROJECT
I had intended leaving for Argentina in late February. I required a publisher. That has taken a while. Firstly I am an old man and this is an era of youth. Backing me is a gamble. I might die before I produce.

Secondly, publishing is changing. Communications are changing. Blogs and web sites gain huge readership.

Why The Friday Project?
Because they understand modern media and specialise in transferring Blogs to print.

I was a little concerned at first as to whether they were proper publishers. They lack that slight air of condescension towards the writer which is the publisher’s hallmark. However, Macmillan's handles their distibution and foreign sales (think weeds, starched shirts, careful ties).

[Note: he never mentioned even the working title of the third volume, which will be a 2008 crossing of China by motorbike in company with a Chinese American friend and sage, AngWie Ming.]

Advertising

Bet you thought I was going to mention pre-press hype for the blook. Nope. This is a blip from Ecademy.com about Gandolfi's ride:

Old Toad On A Bike - a fantastic opportunity for the right brand

He needs to secure some sponsorship to cover his living costs along the way. Does anyone out there work for or know someone in the PR or Marketing Departments for Honda or Dominos Pizza, or do you own or look after a brand who would be suitable? Press interest is high. The bike can be branded and there will be frequent mentions in the blog, book and interviews (he also has a column set up in Mature Times).

Moral of the Story

Any other old toads (or toadettes) out there? It's not too late to hop on your [insert whatever you think you can still straddle or perch or propel], create a blog, line up some sponsors, secure a publisher and then in the words of Nike: "Just Do It."

Anonymous Blogging Update

Thanks to Justin at taint.org for adding to his comments section:

"Ah, here's something very important: when using Tor, always make sure that when logging in with a username and password, you do this over HTTPS. Otherwise you could run into this kind of problem." [The link is to a post about embassy email accounts being breached.]

Blooker Judge says blooks "parasitic" ... "derivative"

In what was meant to be a compliment to Colby Buzzell's blook, Nick Cohen, one of Lulu's Blooker Prize competition judges, had some pretty mean things to say about the other blooks that were entered.

I can't speak for the other judges, but to me, the supposedly radical medium of the future seemed as parasitic on traditional publishing as political bloggers are on traditional newspapers. We had the escapades of an American who moves to France [Kristin Espinasse's Words In a French Life made the non-fiction shortlist for the 2007 Blooker Prize], which was Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence redone for a US audience; Breakup Babe [by Rebecca Agiewitch, shortlisted for fiction]; a well-written piece of chick-lit whose author admitted her debt to Bridget Jones's Diary; and Monster Island [by David Wellington, shortlisted for fiction], a seventh-rate horror novel, which ripped off every zombie movie ever made. (The author's only original touch was pitting his zombies against a fantasy army of assault-rifle-bearing, 14-year-old Somali schoolgirls.)

And yet... buried underneath the dreadful and the derivative was a rough diamond: My War: Killing Time in Iraq by Colby Buzzell [non-fiction and overall winner of the Blooker competition]. ... In theory, Buzzell could have kept a diary, gone home and turned it into a book. In practice, he wouldn't have had the self-confidence. His blog gave him strength because it attracted praise from hundreds of readers in the eight weeks before the authorities stopped him posting from a cyber cafe at the US base in Mosul. Their encouragement made him realise he could make it as an author. (The Guardian)

I suppose we ought to take heart from that last bit.

Cohen opened the article with this: "The organisers of the 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize asked me to be one of the judges. I suspect they couldn't find anyone else." Probably not. Ironically, he followed with, "I'm glad they did because blooks carry the hopes of techno-Utopians that the net will unleash a new democratic age in which the snobberies and censorship of today's elites are smashed by a tsunami of 'user-generated content'."

I'm pretty sure I know which direction I would like the tsunami to head in first.

One Red Paperclip

A statement from Jake Lingwood, a publisher at Ebury, alerted me to a blook called One Red Paperclip: Or How an Ordinary Man Achieved His Dream with the Help of a Simple Office Supply. The concept behind the blog is a children's game called Bigger or Better. You begin with any item and try to trade up. In Kyle MacDonald's case he began with one red paperclip and his goal was to end up with a house at the end of one year.

In the sidebar on his blog he has images of the fourteen items he swapped -- stacked with snippets of text between them.

"On July 12th, 2005 I posted a picture of
[image of red paperclip]
on this website. I traded my one red paperclip with Rawnie and Corinna for
[image of fish-shaped pen]
which was exchanged with Annie for
[image of ceramic doorknob], etc."

Clicking on each of the images takes you to the blog entry which recounts that particular trade.

I confess that the idea intrigued me, enough that I might even read the 14 entries in a blog. But a blook? To my dismay, publisher Lingwood also said, "The other blog [to book] we have is the Red Paperclip - a guy who has managed to swap a paperclip for a house in a year. It has a very compelling narrative, which is what makes the book so fantastic." Unusual, yes. Compelling? I don't think so.

Could be that I'm wrong. The Edmonton Journal reported that MacDonald not only got a book deal with Random House but a movie deal with Dreamworks! "He said he was approached by about 40 book publishers and 50 production companies who were interested in his story."

But then again, maybe I'm right.

"MacDonald wasn't a writer when he began his blog, and the book version of his adventures remains the work of an amateur. Many chapters cry out for an editor. His greatest asset is his engaging, informal tone. But he sometimes spoils his understated prose by trying too hard to be clever"
(Los Angeles Times Book Review).

In an interview at BloggerView MacDonald was asked, "How has the journey of writing about your efforts been different to actually living through it?" I find his flippant and arrogant response in high contrast to the what most blook authors have said:

Well, it's a lot tougher to write about things months after the fact, especially when you were drunk at the time! (Not all the time... but some of it!) I'm enjoying writing the book, but I have to say I enjoy doing things much more than writing about things!

Gawker pretty well sums up the situation in the article "Why we hate that 'One Red Paperclip' guy so much":

"... we learned that the house that is the fruit of the former layabout and girlfriend moocher-offer's bloggy efforts is actually only worth about $8,000. HA! Well, "ha." Because, of course, the dude still got a book deal and a movie deal out of the whole shebang.

"Kyle MacDonald got a book and a movie deal based on the fact that, on one particular day, a blog editor had a post quota to fill, and then a few hundred thousand people saw a link and went, "Huh, okay." Then, when they got to his blog, they found that it was full of unremarkable, insipid, insight-free prose. Didn't matter: Kyle's paperclip journey had begun."

Anonymous Lawyer & The Screwtape Letters

At last I have the opportunity to open a blook for real! Instead of relying on other people's comments to tell me how well the blog translated into print, I get to see for myself. About time!

On our latest excursion to the public library I checked out Anonymous Lawyer by Jeremy Blachman. I've just begun reading but I couldn't wait to tell you what I've discovered - it's like The Screwtape Letters all over again! It's the email exchanges between Anonymous Lawyer and Anonymous Niece that did it.

In The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, Screwtape, a senior devil, writes to his nephew, Wormwood, a junior tempter, about the ins and outs of the bureaucracy that is Hell. In a similar fashion, Anon. Lawyer hopes to mentor and pave the way for Anon. Niece who is just finishing college and is en route to law school. Unlike Wormwood whose communications are only implied, Anon. Niece sends email back to her uncle. This plays to Blachman's advantage as Niece is the one who gets her uncle blogging. She also spreads the word about his blog.

Since I'm only on page twenty, I can't say anything definitively about how else the character of the niece is used. I'll make a guess, though, that she acts as the conscience Anon. Lawyer doesn't have, which would further parallel, although in reverse, The Screwtape Letters. I searched the Anonymous Lawyer blog for clues, but only found one reference to the niece. It was an email -- which matches the blook -- but she was only 16. What an incredible and clever ploy to create a character for the blook based on that one post on the blog!