Collaborate! - Part 2

As promised here's my interview with Jeff Cohen, Editor of Mystery Morgue and head honcho for Murder by Committee.

Blooking Central: In your first response, Jeff, you mentioned that "the tough part lately has been getting authors interested in contributing to a project that requires them to read 30 chapters and write another in the space of a couple of weeks." I'm really curious about why they would have so little time to write?

Jeff Cohen: Mystery Morgue posts on the first of the month. That means I have to have all my copy in by, generously, the 25th. The new author has to read all the chapters (including the one just posted by the last
author, probably on the 25th or later) and write their own, in time
to meet our posting deadline. So it doesn't leave a lot of time.

BC: What can you tell me about the assignment or direction(s) that you have given your authors? Is there a word-minimum, for instance?

JC: I gave them no parameters at all. Write what you want, we generally aim at around 1,000 words, but feel free to go shorter or longer as the spirit moves you. In the beginning, we started with the idea of the author writing in the style of someone who inspired them to write, but most authors didn't get that, or weren't interested, so we abandoned it pretty quickly.

BC: Could you imagine a similar but smaller project that might have been more successful?

JC: It might have been best to have a definite end date, to say there would be twelve chapters, one year, and end it, and then start another the following year, maybe. As it was, the story went so insane that it was impossible to turn it into anything but a diversion for the author and the reader. I have no idea what it's about now.

BC: Any idea on statistics for readers?

JC: None. I'm not in charge of that. Sue or PJ might know. My guess is: not millions.

BC: Did you start with an outline? Or is everyone making the plot up as they go? How are you going to bring it to a conclusion?

JC: We started with a chapter written by Julia Spencer-Fleming (All Mortal Flesh) for a novel she never wrote. Julia was kind enough to hand it over to me, and I spun it off to the 29 other authors who contributed to the madness. How am I going to bring it to a conclusion? That's an excellent question. I wish I knew.

BC: Why would an author want to participate?

JC: For the free publicity; for the chance to write any damn thing they want. To be associated with the other authors who have participated. For fun.

BC: You said you hadn't considered publishing, but surely since self-publishing with Lulu is free, a book should at least be up for consideration, yes?

JC: No. Getting clearances from all 30 authors would be a nightmare, and I don't know that it could be edited into something coherent.

***

I appreciate Cohen taking the time to give us his perspective. Now I'd like to ask you, Blook Folk, what do you think might have made this project successful? I guess I'm defining successful as something that has continuity and can be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. Would an outline have helped? Was there a way to work ahead of the schedule do you think?

Part 3 will include a mini-interview with the Great She Elephant and continues the discussion of collaborative online fiction.

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Collaborate!

Part 1 ** Part 2 ** Part 3

The Yeshua Gene

Peter Hall wrote only FOUR posts total on his blog, "the gob blog". Beyond a short reference to his debut novel (at 73!), The Yeshua Gene, I can't discover how this blook qualified for entry into the 2007 Blooker competition.

In his final post the day before Christmas, entitled "Jesus' brothers and sisters", Hall says:

"As an old person (73) I like to retreat into antiquity. The history of the 1st Century AD is absolutely fascinating, if only because it was one of the most interesting periods of history. The birth of Jesus Christ was that rarest of events - one that changed the course of world history.

"Using the magic gateways of Google, Wikipedia, etc., to knowledge and information, I have been able to trace 31 sources of reference to Christ's siblings.

"I have used this material to write my debut novel - The Yeshua Gene - published by Lulu.com, available in book form or as a download."

This suggests to me that the content did not appear on the web prior to publishing in print. Okay, so am I being too tough with my application of the definition? The raw material had to be web-based if Hall was Googling for it or looking it up in Wikipedia. Honestly, that doesn't seem like enough to me. Therefore it is not a blook, rather a book which represents a herculean (but fascinating) feat for an elderly gentleman. While I'm at it, the paperback is priced at $26.32. Pretty steep for a paperback.

Collaborate, collaborate! Dance to the Music

GoingLikeSixty posted "Splenda - the alternative to sugar - a blook" and I gotta say, "This collaborative stuff is getting way out of hand." Imagine letting someone like GLS take a turn at crafting sentences!

But while we're on the subject, I've heard from Randy Richardson (Lost in the Ivy):

You remarked that you liked the online formatting and design for the [Char Dog] project. I’m responsible for that as well, but I have to confess to stealing some of the ideas for it from my publicist, PJ Nunn at Breakthrough Promotions, who had been running a similar serialized novel on her company website, “Murder by Committee,” written by the authors she represents. I don’t know how far along that project got, but I have a hunch that it ran into some of the same challenges that we faced with “Char Dog.”

I contacted Jeff Cohen, Editor of Mystery Morgue who oversees the Murder by Committee project. Here's his initial response:

"While Murder By Committee wasn't so much intended as a blook, I guess it does fit into that category. I'm afraid the tough part lately has been getting authors interested in contributing to a project that requires them to read 30 chapters and write another in the space of a couple of weeks. Perhaps the organization could have been better on
my part.

I want to point out a couple of things about what he said. First, regular readers will realize that I wouldn't refer to this as a blook because it has not yet appeared in print. Second, the timeframe that Cohen refers to is based on publishing one chapter a month. Which means that with the posting of Chapter 30 by Kathleen Tracy [author of over 30 books about celebrities and the entertainment industry] back in February, Murder by Committee has been in the works for 2 1/2 years! The last thing worth mentioning is that cumulative conundrum. It's enough to put quite a few folks off contributing.

I interviewed Cohen at length and will present that as Part 2. I also heard from Jane Adams, the Great She Elephant, partly responsible for the collaborative work Blovel. I'm hoping to hear from others involved in the project! which will make for Part 3. Maybe together we can dope out why collaborative fiction works don't work or discover measures that might help them succeed.

***
Collaborate!

Part 1 ** Part 2 ** Part 3

Get Your Book Deal Here

Of the five titles which William Roetzheim authored:
Why Things Are: How Complexity Theory Answers Life’s Toughest Questions, Thoughts I Left Behind: Collected Poems, Frost, Eliot, and Old-School Software Development, the last is a blook. As the publisher at Level 4 Press he also brought Erik Rush's Annexing Mexico, which was a blook, into print. I wrote to Roetzheim asking him to tell us what he thinks would make a blog blook-worthy. This is his response.

***

To be frank, whether the content was previously published as a blog would not be relevant to my decision to publish or not publish a book. Here's the "perfect book," for us or any other publisher:

1. The book content contains things that people want to read. A successful blog may provide evidence of this.
2. The book is organized and clear so that it can be described correctly in a sentence or so;
3. The writing is solid; and
4. The author has a "platform" that -- the author -- can use to successfully sell the book.

The last point is the most neglected, yet it is the most important. I'll illustrate this as follows:

• Situation A: You have a great but unknown author who has written a great book. The odds that this book will be published by a traditional publisher are one or two percent at best, and probably much less than that.
• Situation B: You have a terrible writer who has a platform that will guarantee 50,000 copies sold of a book. This author has a 100% chance of getting published. The publisher will just hire a ghost writer and work with the author and the ghost writer to develop the right book to sell to the platform.

Most people think that it's the job of the publisher to sell the book. Publishers don't sell books. Publishers edit books, print books, and handle book distribution. Authors sell books, even with the major publishers.

We're smaller, so for us if an author had the first three points under control and the author could personally guarantee 2,500 copies of the book sold through their platform, we'd almost certainly publish the book.
I'd probably run the book concept past the major chains first (e.g., Barnes and Noble) just to be sure that they would be willing to stock the book, but the author's guarantee of sales would be the most important factor in my decision.

And just in case it's not obvious, a successful blog with an associated mailing list has all the earmarks of an effective platform.

William

****

The list of published titles from Level 4 Press is small, but, as with the other publishers who've written Blooking Central, good things are in the pipeline! If you check the publisher's website, you'll see that there's quite a range including children's books. In addition to the titles above, Level 4 Press has published:

• Trapped Inside the Story by Leslie Cohen
• Opening the Borders by Larry Blasko
• The Best of Border Voices by Jack Webb (editor)
• One Good Year by Larry Gaffney
• Lightspeed: The Quest by E. Douglas Ward
• Double Bubble Trouble by Dennis Goldberg
• The Giant Book of Bedtime Stories: Classic Nursery Rhymes, Bible Stories, Fables, Parables, and Stories
• The Giant Book of Poetry

Old School Blook

I found Old-School Software Development: Lessons from a Software Survivor by William Roetzheim listed as one of the entries in the Blooker Prize competition. The source listed was a website that was identified as defunct. Which means I was pretty much at a dead-end.

However, I did find that you could take a peek at the innards of the blook at Level 4 Press, the publisher's website. The biography of the author, either at Amazon or at Level 4, will wow you.

Since the website is gone, I wrote to Roetzheim to see if he would tell me how the blook came to be. He graciously sent the following:

"I created an electronic newsletter called "Trends in Software Engineering
Process Management" or tsepm. The website was www.tsepm.com. Each month I created a new newsletter and sent out an email notification to subscribers, which ultimately numbered about 30,000. [Check the bio if you want to know how he got those numbers!] When I sold
my company I retained rights to the content I had developed, but the new
owners did not maintain the website and allowed the domain to lapse (in
hindsight, I should have excluded this from the sale). I then took the
content and organized it into a book, adding enough tie-in information to give the book continuity. It is currently one of the top selling books at http://www.level4press.com/, and I've had many ex-TSEPM subscribers thank me because they enjoy having a hard copy, bound version of the materials."

A couple things to note that I've mentioned before:

• the author had specific knowledge or expertise;
• he was also known for his writing;
• he had site traffic that would make most of us salivate;
• and he was careful to organize the content and
• he added "tie-in information for continuity."

All things to keep in mind when you ask yourself if there's a blook in your blog.

Methuselah's Daughter

Every once in a while I tie into something that I can't seem to make heads nor tails of. It happened to me again with Methuselah's Daughter, which was entered into the Blooker Prize competition. I wrote to the co-authors, John Eddy and Dean Esmay, and asked if they could give me some help navigating the blog as well as give me some information on how the blook came into being.

John wrote back with a truly phenomenal story. [Dean will be leaving comments]. Enjoy and be sure to check the links John provided!

****

Cheryl --

It's a long story :)

Zsallia is a character who has been running through my imagination for more than 30 years at this point. I'd made abortive attempts to write her story in the past, but it really never worked out. In 2002 I discovered the world of blogs and decided this had to be something I could use to help me finally figure her out.

The blog is written by her and she never breaks character when she writes
there. The entries from 2002 to December of 2003 are all prior to when we began writing the novel. At that point it really was a character study and nothing more. By writing under her name and taking moderate measures to maintain anonymity I was able to engage other people in conversation and explore her reactions, as well as their reactions to her. Most readers seemed to enjoy the back and forth and were willing to suspend disbelief, some were openly hostile to the very idea and a few seemed to buy into the entire premise without hesitation.

I pulled the plug on the original blog in December 2003, intent on finally writing the novel. By that time 'Zsallia' had struck up an online
conversation with Dean Esmay and he asked her if he could edit the blog
postings into a book, so I came clean to him regarding who I was and what I was about and we agreed to work together. Initially I was the writer and he was sounding board and editor, but that quickly morphed into a full collaboration -- Dean had ideas that I liked and he also had the organization skills I lacked so he was able to keep us moving forward.

What you are seeing on the blog today are chapters of the novel we submitted for the Blooker Prize. The simplest way to read them is to click on the category "The Novel", roll it back to its oldest page, then read from the bottom up. Once I have all the chapters up I'll build a new page for them to make it more reader friendly.

How much of the blog is in the book? Both very much, and very little. Since the blog was really a character study its ultimate product is all through the book, but certain posts from the blog made their way into the book, though in very expanded and sometimes radically different forms.

• "Scent of Fate" from January of 2003 became 15000 words on her early
  life; in particular 4 years with the first man she actually called her
  husband.
• "The Bath" about 600 words written in July of 2003, became more than 45000 words describing her life in the Roman Republic circa 130BC.
• "1000 Years In A Nutshell" made the transition almost unchanged as well as
• "Michigan Territory -1835" which was broken into sections and serves as prelude to each of the four sections of the book.

Other bits and pieces of the blog are all through the book, such as the characters of Edna and Joshua, but the total content of the original blog in the book probably rests at about 20%.

The categories are a bit scattershot, but generally are tied to themes of posts. The Past is obviously stories from her past, The Present describes things she faces day-to-day in present time, Philosophy contains those posts where she offered her thoughts on herself and the world at large, and so on. Posts made after 2003 generally support the novel's storyline. Some posts are actually parts we wrote then edited out of the
final manuscript.

I've found it difficult to keep up the blog since the novel was written even though there is so much more to be told, but I'm making an effort to restart things these next few weeks, beginning with an upcoming post by Zsallia complaining about how the novel writers are making it hard for her to write on her own blog :). In fact I wish I had set out to make the chapter postings a separate page from the get-go, since the blog really should be read separate from the novel. The two touch each other but they are not identical in tone or content.

I hope this answers most of your questions, and Dean may chime in with more details (He'll tell you I'm stubborn and I cling too tightly to the character. He's right.).

Best regards,
John Eddy

****

I'm sure that if you have questions, either of the gentleman would be happy to answer them. So, ask away!

Dilbert writes a blook

Thanks to GoingLikeSixty for alerting me to this!

Recently Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, wrote at the Dilbert blog:

"Did you notice that the The Dilbert Blog archive suspiciously disappeared last spring? A big publisher agreed with your frequent suggestions that I should turn the funnier posts into a book. So I did, and as part of that deal removed the book content from the Internet."

It's called Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Ignores Helpful Advice and the "big publisher" is Portfolio/Penguin.

The Levine Greenberg Literary Agency announced the deal on their website back in January. You can read their description of the blook [I'm not allowed to quote any of it without permission.] For a less biased look, here's this from Publishers Weekly (Amazon). It gives a real sense of the blogginess that made it to print:

"Adams builds his latest book ... out of entries from his blog, which results in a lot of short chapters and abrupt changes in topic. Still, some ongoing themes do emerge, as the bestselling cartoonist discusses his wedding plans ... ."

A snippet from Booklist (Amazon) says that there are "more than 150 short pieces covering every slice of life beyond the workplace." To my mind that sounds pretty bloggy! One of the reviewers at Amazon asked the question that I guess pretty much ought to be asked whenever the possibility of turning a blog into a blook comes up:

T. G. Johnson "Metaphysical Epistomologist" (USA)
"Seriously, why would anyone make a book out of a blog, except to make even more money? Even weirder, why would anyone buy someone's old blog posts? Clearly, Adams feels he isn't making enough money, or else he would have turned this deal down. Maybe it's good business for him, but it's ripping off the consumer who previously would have gotten to read his blog for free. I just hope he doesn't try it again in another year or two."

Annexing Mexico

Another blook that was entered into the Blooker Prize competition is Annexing Mexico: Solving the Border Problem Through Annexation and Assimilation by Erik Rush. The source of the blook listed at the Blooker blog is Rush's website. I didn't immediately see anything that looked like what I was looking for. I did find out, however, that Rush is a prolific writer and has written for several outlets. I surmised that the blook was a compilation of columns, but wrote to him to be sure. This is his response:

"The genesis of the book was a column I did for WorldNetDaily in 2005. I've written a bunch of columns on the subject since, some of which were incorporated in the book. Most of it was newer material that had not appeared before and research to back up my assertions and to validate the viability of the annexation idea."

For those of you looking for a publisher for your blog, Rush's blook was published by Level 4 Press. They also published another blook, Old School Software Development by William Roetzheim.

The Story of Wendrich artHouse

Periodically, as I work my way through the list of entries in the Lulu Blooker Prize competition, I come across a volume which leaves me wondering about how a blook is defined. Early on I adopted the Blooker contest definition:

"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. This material includes the website's characters, themes, ideas or outline that ends up getting published as a printed book.

In some instances this definition was applied quite loosely by the folks who submitted their blooks. In fact, I've demonstrated that some were actually not blooks at all, having never appeared on the web. This isn't the case with About Us: The Story of Wendrich artHouse by Nicola Shirley Wendrich, but I do have some reservations about it.

If you go to the web address listed as the source for the blook, you'll quickly see that you're at a business site. Given the title, neither of us is surprised, right? Well, I know what I'm looking for, it's the About Page. Here I find a description of the book:

"Additional research accompanies the prophetic images on this site, whilst a fuller story of Harry and Nicola’s life journey leading to their current work can be read in her autobiographical book, “ABOUT US: The Story of Wendrich artHouse,” which can be freely downloaded from the home page or purchased as a paperback from the Gallery Shop."

This isn't much different than the way the book was described for the Blooker competition:

"ABOUT US: The Story of Wendrich artHouse gives the full picture behind our website, which has been set up to make available images of both spiritual and prophetic content. It is the true story of the spiritual awakenings and paths of the artists, and it details some of their unusual experiences."

But the piece from the website -- about the paperback book -- caught my eye [Note: "Currently the book is only available in Adobe (pdf) format."] I searched for the publisher using the author's name and only came up with the Blooker reference. Hmmm. It has an ISBN: 184728258X and the publication date is listed as January 2007 [just in time for the contest]. So what's the deal? Even if it had been self-published, Lulu would still carry it as an offering, as would BookLocker.com and a host of other print on demand companies. It strikes me as curious and I'm at a loss to explain it. Can somebody give me a likely scenario?

I must confess that I didn't download the PDF file. My interest is entirely with the dead tree version -- how it came to be and what its relation is to the source. I did, however, find that there's a poetry page. One might guess that some poems found their way into the paperback.

Here's hoping that Nicola or her husband Harry will stop by and give us the scoop.

Bigtrip

Ever wonder what your blog might look like in print? Then you really need to check out what Tim Leigh did with his family's travel blog. After reversing the order of the blog posts, Leigh captured the blog (I don't know how), then self-published using Lulu, calling the blook bigtrip. He's left the story for you to read in blog fashion as well as posted a PDF version. Of course, you could always buy either the paperback or PDF at Lulu! I don't want to short the gentleman any sales, but open the PDF on the blog and take a peek.

The Lulu description is terse, not even hinting at the unique perspective provided:

"In summer 2005 family Leigh took a big trip. With children aged four and one they travelled through America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. This is their journal which was originally published as a weblog."

To give you just a hint of the "insides" -- and I'm guessing this is why they entered it in the Blooker Prize competition:

"Interestingly, I was reprimanded twice in the Empire State building (at ground level I hasten to add) for carrying Ben on my shoulders. It's a health and safety issue. Apparently. Yet two blocks away someone would happily sell me a gun over the counter without batting an eyelid. I think their phrase is 'go figure'."

This is how they kept the site updated:

"We updated this site each day from wherever we could get a GPRS signal. We used a BlackBerry handheld to submit updates via email. It worked remarkably well."