A Walk with Jane Austen

I wrote back in July about a blook-to-be called A Walk with Jane Austen by Lori Smith. Now that the blook has been published, the author took a few moments to write me about how the blook came into being. Thanks!

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I was familiar with blogging, but never seriously considered it because I felt like it was, um... a bit silly. But my brother introduced me to the idea of blooks. And in the fall of 2005, my friend Kristine started a blog (she also has a book of the same name coming out in the spring), and I saw how professional it was and how easy to do.

I was already working on my manuscript and book proposal, and as I looked at other blooks, thought this could be a good way to connect with an audience. I needed that from an emotional and practical standpoint. Writing is lonely, and to get feedback meant so much to me, to know that what I was writing was connecting with people. But also from perhaps a more mercenary perspective, I wanted to demonstrate to publishers that I was a marketeer, willing to work hard and take initiative to build an audience for my book.

So I started putting excerpts of the book out there, and connected with an audience, and it felt really good. It was also scary -- at times, very scary. I've never had any writing go "public" before it was edited, and I'm one of those writers who edits a lot and never likes my first drafts. So at times I felt incredibly vulnerable having bits of a book draft out there.

At the same time I was blogging, I signed with an agent (in the fall of '05, I believe), Beth Jusino of Alive Communications (www.alivecom.com) and we finalized the proposal (which is a long process -- I think it took us about four months). The response from publishers was wonderful, and we had two offers by May of '06. The book released on October 16 from WaterBrook Press ( www.waterbrookpress.com), the Christian division of Random House.

I also started the Jane Austen Quote of the Day (www.austenquotes.com ), to help connect with Austen fans, establish a reputation in the online Austen community, and of course help market the book.

In the beginning I planned to put the entire book online, but I got about a third of the way through and stopped posting excerpts. I think because I was feeling so vulnerable, and feeling like I didn't want to put the entire book online. It wasn't really a conscious decision. I kept meaning to post and for one reason or another it didn't happen. Part of me wanted to keep posting excerpts and part of me was hesitant and the hesitant part won out.

My year-long timeline at the beginning was overly optimistic! It's been a two-year process in total, and that's really not bad for the slow-moving publishing world.

I would recommend to any writer that they blog. It's enabled me to connect with a whole online Austen world, and provided so many promotional opportunities, and actually given me a bit of legitimacy, I think. I highly recommend it. I think the key is that it doesn't have to be deeply personal or like a diary, but topic-focused on what you're writing about.

Blook about Neuroblastoma

Looking for an extraordinary use of a website? Check out The Official Website of James Birrell Note, this link takes you to the updates page which looks like a variation of a blog archive. The book associated with this site is Ya Can't Let Cancer Ruin Your Day: The James Emails (Green Train Books) by Syd Birrell.

This is how Birrell describes the birth of the blook:

"I began writing emails to family and close friends to keep them up to date on James' condition," said Syd, "but soon I found myself drifting away from stark summaries of the medical challenges of the day, and instead began writing about our adventures in living. Our young daughter Rebecca said 'Just because you have cancer doesn’t mean you stop having good times.' So we put aside our grief and fear, and every day we looked for opportunities to live our dreams."

For regular readers this may sound somewhat familiar (see SharedBook, CarePages & Rebecca Rose). Ya Can't Let Cancer Ruin Your Day was entered in the Blooker competition.

My 100 Million Dollar Secret

I had no idea that the same David Weinberger who wrote Small Pieces Loosely Joined had written another book, My 100 Million Dollar Secret. You have your choice of how you want to read it - the website is still there.

In fact, how you read it is the thing that caught my eye.

I'm hoping that you can see how he's laid the site out from this screenshot: Order a Printed Copy; Read it Online for Free - with each chapter numbered; Read it online for $4.00 - at Lulu.com; or Download for Free - MS Word file or PDF! There's even a Note for Teachers who wish to use the book to discuss moral or ethical issues raised in the book.

If you choose "Start Here", you begin at the beginning. At the bottom of Chapter One there's a button that will take you to Chapter Two. As would be expected, there are two arrows at the bottom of Chapter Two - one to take you to the next chapter and one which would take you to the previous chapter. There is also a link to the Home Page.

I wrote to Weinberger and he generously responded that this is NOT a blook. However, I'm recommending at least the components of his layout as something to keep in mind once your project is finished.

Daily Dose of Blarney

I contacted Thomas Brogan whose blook, The Brogan Book: Your Daily Blarney, was a competitor for the Blooker Prize. I wanted to know how he turned his blog into a blook. This is his reply:

"Thanks for your interest in my book. The idea to turn my blogs into a book really took shape after a year of blogging. A friend of mine, who enjoyed reading my blog thought it would be nice to have all my blogs in book form so that it could be read at anytime, even without a computer. I thought it was a good idea too, so I decided to take a shot at getting the book published. I searched around for a publisher for my book and found that without putting a large chunk of my own money down, I wasn't going to get anything done.

"So, I finally decided to go with Lulu.com to publish the book. With their print-on-demand options I wouldn't have to buy 1000 of my books before they would publish my book. So I picked the publisher, now I had to figure out how to put the blogs into book form. Without a lot of other "blooks" out on the market at the time, I really had to come up with the format from scratch. After making change after change, I was finally able to come up with a format I was happy with.

"After going through the experience, I will say that blogging is a great way to get your writing creative juices going. Also it provides a great enviroment for feedback from potential readers.

I've written Mr. Brogan a follow-up email asking about that "figuring out how to put the blogs into book form." I'm hoping he'll stop by and tell us what he did. :-)

5th Month in Review

Blooks

I guess I've been spending way too much time looking at online fiction and the like - let me know if you think so, too. My count of blooks that I've examined so far stands at 214. Unfortunately, this month only contributed 28 to the total. On the other hand, I began a new, once-a-month venture - Blook Looks - over at Future Perfect Publishing with Blogs From The Liberal Standpoint: 2004-2005 by Lawrence R. Velvel.

Here's the other 27:

• Sufficient unto this Day
• Old-School Software Development: Lessons from a Software Survivor
• Methuselah's Daughter
• Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!
• Annexing Mexico: Solving the Border Problem Through Annexation and Assimilation
• About Us: The Story of Wendrich artHouse
• Bigtrip
• Minor Side Effects
• Dating Amy: 50 True Confessions of a Serial Dater
• Bets and the City: Sally Nicoll's Spread Betting Diary
• In Search of Adam
• The New Rules of PR
• A Lifetime of Secrets
• Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
• The Bumper B3ta Book of Sick Jokes
• The Ladies' Loos: From Plumbing to Plucking: A Practical Guide for Girls
• Deep Love
• Gospel*
• Growing Up in Trengganu
• Out of the Tunnel
• Americans on Britain
• Seniorwriting: A Brief Guide for Seniors Who Want to Write
• Beer in the Evening
• Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper
• Small Pieces Loosely Joined
• The Cluetrain Manifesto
• Hip Tastes: The Fresh Guide to Wine
• Abandoned: The True Story of a Little Girl Who Didn't Belong

Blooks-to-be

These are the ones that will be published in the near future:

• Tuned In by David Meerman Scott, Phil Myers and Craig Stull
• Bob Burke's Third Pig Detective Agency and
• Dorien Grey's "A World Ago"

Author/Publisher Letters

I heard from several folks:

• Methuselah's Daughter - authors John Eddy and Dean Esmay


• Benny Thomas, author of Sufficient unto this Day


• Jeremy Huggins, author of Gospel*


• Horton Carew, author of Horton's Folly


• Clare Christian, The Friday Project


• William Roetzheim, Level 4 Press

Series

Only one series this month - Collaborate! I'm open to suggestions on other series that you might like to have me do. [Hint, hint!]

• Part 1


• Part 2


• Part 3

Collaborate! Part 3

In Collaborate! Part 2 Jeff Cohen gave us valuable insights into the Murder by Committee project but an administrator or overseer has a much different perspective than a participant. In the case of the Great She Elephant and the Blovel we have a blending of the two positions. I'm grateful for her candor. I'm also including comments from Alda Kalda who worked on the Blovel. Between the two, they highlight the primary difficulties of a collaborative online work of fiction.

A while back I took a look at Blovel, an online collaborative work that seemed to have stalled. That's where my letter from Great She Elephant begins:

"The hiatus is certainly not deliberate but there has been quite a drop in enthusiasm levels. I think as a form, blovels have a few problems - it's very hard to write novel length works freeform, even for one person but trying to do any rigorous preplanning as a committee of people who don't even know each other is challenging. Initially, we tried to agree some basic plot points beforehand but got absolutely nowhere so just dived in. And there is also an inherent contradiction in that the moment you start caring about where the story is going, the fact that you can't control anyone else's contribution makes the exercise less satisfying. I certainly found that - if you look back at my contributions, they are primarily intended to unwind or neutralise contributions from some of the other authors, whom I could have quite happily taken an axe to after I read their stuff. I don't think I'd get involved in another blovel unless it involved people who knew each other well in a work sense and who were prepared to plan and then stick to the plan."

These comments raise several issues.

• Should one person have the authority or be given the responsibility of keeping the story on track?
• Should there be a story track in the first place?!
• Should posts be reviewed before posting to ensure the author has stayed on track? [How stifling would that be?]

If you're considering working on a novel - collaboratively and online - I suggest you see GSE's post, "Right then" about whether the project should be abandoned. Be sure to read the comments.

GSE was not the only one who was disappointed in the project's outcome. Alda Kalda was one of the fifteen writers involved. [Let me interrupt myself to wonder along with you whether fifteen was too many.] Here's Alda's take on what happened:

"Yes - my feeling when working on the Blovel was that it was too incoherent and that it would have helped a lot if there had been a rough outline as to where it should be going and what the characters should be aiming at.

"That said, one of the things I discovered through the project was that, when writing a longer work, one of the most satisfying things is getting *inside* the action and getting to know characters intimately, and steering them in a way that is completely logical based on who they are in your mind (or, on occasion, being surprised when they act autonomously, albeit more logically than you, the writer, had foreseen). But when you have more people writing, they of course take a different view of the characters than you do, and may steer them in a very different direction, so when it comes to you to write, you hardly know that character, and you really don't know what to do with them. That was my experience, and it wasn't a feeling I relished. Maybe I'm just a control freak!

"Anyway, those are my thoughts from the top of my head. I don't know if a project like this can work out successfully -- but what I discovered was that it wasn't quite for me. At the outset, I envisioned something like the sort of game where you go around a circle and every person adds a new sentence to make a story, which can be a lot of fun -- but when it's A BOOK (or in this case a blovel) I found it really frustrating not to be able to live yourself into the world of the book in that meditative kind of way that makes writing so pleasurable - because it's really not your world."

So is there any way to make an novel-length collaborative online effort work? I'm listening.

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Collaborate!

Part 1 ** Part 2 ** Part 3

Sufficient unto this Day

One of the entries for the Blooker Prize competition was Benny Thomas's
Sufficient unto this Day. Unfortunately the source blog cannot be accessed unless you are a member, which I am not. [By the way, is anyone else getting tired of registering just so you can leave comments? Argh!] There is, however, a second blog, called "Sufficient-unto-this-day," which references the blook.

From this blog we learn that Thomas is Indian, sixty-somthing, and living in the Netherlands ... and that he has a second book which was published online. But I couldn't find the name of it. On the other hand his main page at Lulu.com has lots of books, some in English, some in Dutch.

Rather than try and content myself with so little information, I contacted Thomas who was happy to help me out. [I'm grateful for all these folks who have picked up English as a second or third language!]

"I have been posting short essays in two blogs for more than a year. I put all these together into some order and self-published through www.lulu.com. Sufficient unto this Day was made into a blook particularly for the 2007 Lulu blooker prize. Another book, The Life of Aesop, is also published through Lulu. At the moment I am busy trying to reformat these books with new font and new cover. Hopefully I may be able to release them in a fortnight.

"I have three picture books online. You may check these,- once again by typing out www.lul.com and entering my name benny thomas or bennymkje and clicking on 'go'( top right hand corner). Hope my reply has been useful."

Cheers,

Regular readers will know that I couldn't let The Life of Aesop escape scrutiny! "Was it a blook?" I asked. Thomas replied: "Aesop wasn't posted in the two blogs that I presently maintain. A few passages from here and there were posted. That is all." [Ah, but enough to call it a blook!] He also gave me the URLs: "http://thomasbenny-benny.blogspot.com/ and the other, where you have to sign in in order to read my posts."

I asked specifically about how the blook was constructed:

"Sufficient unto this Day was made into a blook from the bulk of posts I had already in the three blogs. I only rearranged the order and inserted new entries from my drafts of an earlier book on metaphysics to give the blook some order."

He was also kind enough to give me this from the Preface:

"The 364 entries are arranged for daily reading and the blook forms more or less a compilation of blogs that I had posted at three sites since April 1 2005. The title is borrowed from the words of Jesus,” Sufficient Unto This Day Is The Evil Thereof.”

"Wherever an asterisk is set against a name or concept it tells that additional information is given at the end. A glossary sounds fine in a
book but in a blook? I am not sure. But as the saying is, ‘what is good for the book is good for the blook.’ So there is one."

In his final note to me:

"On second thoughts this may also be of use: First make your material into word document and choose the format you want: pocketbook size or
6"x9"etc. You can make that on the standard format given by Lulu. Other online publishers may have their own format. I did it thru Lulu. Instructions given by them I followed to make the blook."

And why did he enter the Blooker competition? "I entered the 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize by a fluke. I didn't know of Lulu or blooks till I chanced upon this competition."