The Book of the Enemy

Catch my column at Future Perfect Publishing about The Book of the Enemy, a multi-media book, that might someday hit print and be a blook!

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.

Best Practices for Blooks

I'm pleased as can be to have heard from Tony Pearson, author of Inside System Storage - Volume I. Among his many comments was this: "I would love to see a "Best Practices" for writing blooks." Me, too. I think this is a super idea. Would you like to help?

I've looked at lots of non-fiction blooks at Blooking Central. A few that come to mind are some I mentioned in my last column at Future Perfect Publishing, "Business Blooks - Beta Publishing," such as Avinash Kaushik's Web Analytics: An Hour a Day and Michael Lopp's Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering. And let's not forget Gina Trapani's LifeHacker.

Non-fiction books (to my mind at least) are generally presented in topical fashion. If you're producing your book from your blog [making it a blook ;-) that makes it pretty tough unless you're an incredibly organized person and doped the whole thing out ahead of time. Most of us post as subjects or topics present themselves. For instance, I posted about Amazon's new e-book reader shortly after it was released. The timing made sense, but if I was going to simply dump my blog into print, the post would be sandwiched between "Can We Trust the Gospels?" and "Inside System Storage"! I'd much rather that it appeared in a section or chapter about Presentation of Your Blog or some such, similar to what Novelr's Design: Improving Readability Without Lifting A Pencil.

In order to arrange blog material in cohesive chapters we'll have to rearrange the posts. Of course, if you wrote your posts BEFORE you blogged them -- spelling and grammar checking, polishing -- then saved them as files, you probably named them something useful, maybe even tucked them into separate folders! Yes, people really do this :-)

Sorting after the fact can still be done. How you choose to do it sort of depends on how much material you've got. Methods reported by blookers via comments or email here at Blooking Central range from using Blogger's labels or WordPress's categories to searching your blog for keywords. Those more savvy technically speaking like Trapani used software like DEVONThink Pro.

There are some of us too old-fashioned for that. We just read the posts one at a time and cut and paste them into chapter files. Yes, I am a dinosaur and I know that my days are numbered. But in a way this approach makes its own kind of sense. I file my posts under rather casual labels when I remember to label them at all. And just because a blook is labelled "fiction" doesn't indicate the focus of the post at all. Maybe I was looking at how a particular author marketed his blook or what the navigation of the site was like.

I'll be thinking more about Best Practices in upcoming posts, but then I'd like to think that that's sort of what I've been doing all along with this blog.

Dealing with Pesky Links in Blooks

Tony Pearson, author of Inside System Storage - Volume I, has a recent post, "Ins and Outs of Blooking," which is an incredibly detailed account of how he managed to transform his blog into a print volume (blook). Here's a list of the major decisions that Tony covers. There's absolutely nothing from stopping you from using this as a checklist when you make your own blook!

• Decision 1: Defining the Container
• Decision 2: Chapter Configuration
• Decision 3: Cut-and-Paste
• Decision 4: Numbering the Posts
• Decision 5: Adding behind-the-scenes commentary
• Decision 6: Adding a Glossary
• Decision 7: Designing the Covers
• Decision 8: Finding someone to write the Foreword
• Decision 9: Printing Early Drafts

Links

Several references to links caught my eye as I flicked through the post such as: "Microsoft Word indicates all hyperlinks as bright blue underlined text which I didn't like, so I removed all hyperlinks, to avoid having to pay extra for 'colored pages'." Pearson's solution:

"To indicate where the hyperlinks would have been, I wrapped all the linked text
in [square brackets]. I have now gotten in the habit of doing this for future
blog posts, so if I ever make another book, it will cut down the work and effort
on the cut-and-paste."

Beyond the color or no color issue, most blookers face the question of what to do with links. The Language Log folks, who blooked Far from the Madding Gerund, "floated the references next to the text (sidebar) and lightened the text phrase that was highlighted in the original blog post." The response to their decision has been mixed.

Elayne Zalis (VirtualDayz) put her links into true footnotes. Actually, since she used Blurb, which automatically converts URLs into notes, she didn't have much choice :-) I didn't, still don't, like the fact that Blurb also took the Technorati tags and made them into notes. But speaking of Technorati tags, Pearson says:

"I decided to also cut-and-paste my technorati tags and comments. For comments I made myself, I labeled them 'Addition' or 'Response'. A few people did not realize that I was 'az990tony' making the comments as the blog author, so I changed all to say 'az990tony (Tony Pearson)' to make this more clear, and now do this on all future blog posts to minimize the work for my next book."

Adding the comments if they contribute to the discussion makes sense [did we remember to ask permission of the posters?] but I fail to understand why anyone would want the Technorati tags in a print volume -- they are so eminently "web."

But back to links and notes and such. Pearson constructed a Blogroll as part of the end matter for his blook. Is it truly a reproduction of his blogroll? What is the Reference Table? In plainer language, are the URLs behind the links that were deemed important enough to indicate with square brackets ever captured?

Links to images and videos brought their own set of problems.

"Some of the items I linked to posed a problem. I had to convert YouTube videos to flat images of the first frame to include them into the book. Older links were broken, and I had to find the original graphics. I also sent a note to Scott Adams related about the use of one of his Dilbert cartoons.

In a future post I'll be looking at some other issues Pearson raised. If you want to anticipate me :-), read his full post now.

A Web Comic Goes Blook - Part 5

Author Ray Friesen (YARG!) has been sharing with us about getting his web comics into print (blooking). In one of his many emails [Thanks again, Ray!] he mentioned the importance of having a booth at big book and comic shows. I'd already run into the concept when I was looking at the Dada Detective. Victor posted this about attendance at the MoCCA (Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) Festival:

"Sunday things heated up. Not only were things considerably more crowded in the building, but people were buying things. Our things. We sold out of Dada Detective books-- both full-size and preview size-- and were dangerously low on copies of the Dada Alphabet by shows end. The message? Bring more books! Still, it was kind of a thrill to exceed our expectations. We'll definitely be making a return trip to MoCCA next year. In fact, we already reserved our table."

I wrote to Friesen and asked him about he handles ordering, etc. [You'll see from his response how unclear I can be about what I'm after at times! Of course, I didn't have the URL handy, nor did I have in hand the direct quote that I found in time for this post.]

Blooking Central: The Dada Alphabet folks mentioned that it's really difficult to order for shows. Could you share how you've handled that in the past and how you do it now? While you're at it, could you tell me a bit about how important shows are to your marketing strategy?"

Friesen: I don't know what the Dada Alphabet people mean, it's fairly easy to obtain a booth at a show. Usually you just find the show's website, and they'll be a space reservation form. Shows cost of course, so you have to be able to afford it. I think shows a great way to get your name out there, I like talking to fans personally, and winning over new ones. This next year I'll be at the LA times Festival of Books at UCLA, Comic Con, the American Library Associations show, Book Expo America, Kirkus's New York Show, and whatever else I find between now and then. I also try and set up signings at stores. My local Barnes & Noble always has a book release party with me.

Do they mean getting books in time for a show? It really does help to get the books and whatever made well in advance.

Blooking Central: Sorry for the confusion. I meant ordering for shows. The Dada folks ran out of books at least once and were anxious about how many to order for the next several shows. I would think that shipping books to cons, etc. would be a big deal (especially if you have to pay to ship them home again.)

Really impressive list of places that you'll be!

Friesen: Ah, yes. It's always better to have too many books than not enough. So they order books as they need them for shows? I got boxes full in the garage -- never run out. Shipping books home is never fun, a lot of the shows I do are within driving distance, and the ones I do fly to, I smuggle as much as I can in my luggage (they'll usually let you take a suitcase and 2 carry-ons -- if you economize on clothes you don't have to spend much on postage).

***

My thanks to Ray Friesen for providing this behind the scenes look at blooking a web comic!

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A Web Comic Goes Blook

Part 1 **** Part 2 **** Part 3 **** Part 4

A Web Comic Goes Blook - Part 4

I was intrigued by what Ray Friesen, author of the blook YARG!, had to say about the actual printing of his comics:

"One of the most daunting things about getting a book into print is just affording it. You need to do a high quantity in order to get any sort of good resale price. The best way to get a comic into print is to start small, but think big."

I was a bit thrown by his comment since I had used print-on-demand for my novel, PARK RIDGE (from BookLocker.com). I had no big monetary investment in a "high quantity to get a lower resale price." I asked him about it:

"Should I understand that to mean that you did not use some form of print on demand? See my Q & A with Kevin Cornell (Mojo the Sock Monkey). Ryan North (The Best of Dinosaur Comics: 2003-2005 AD) had some things to say about the use of color and comics."

"I don't use print on demand, frankly because by the time I heard it existed, I was already doing something else. I have my collections printed by Lebonfon, a big printer in Canada that does most of all the comics and graphic novels you can find."

I'm going to interject here that it seems only reasonable to check other blooks and books to see who's printing what.

"Color is really only effective if you're doing a really high quantity (even color copies at a Kinko's-type place cost, what, 60 cents each? double sided, 24 page comic means $14 dollars a comic? So you really have to be printing thousands of them before the price comes down to something reasonable.

"And for me, having a distributor that sells them to book stores means I don't get the full retail price. Barnes & Noble wants to buy the books for half price, and the distributor wants to make money too.

"I didn't know Ryan North had any color books out. I have his black and white collection out from Quack.

Let me say this about color -- Natalie D'Arbeloff self-published Interviews with God through Lulu. It's 112 pages with full-color interior ink and priced at $25.

I was fascinated by Friesen's mention of doing shows. I'd run into the idea when I was researching the Dada Alphabet blooks. Someone had posted that they had run out of books and in my next post I talk with Friesen about scheduling and ordering.

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A Web Comic Goes Blook

Part 1 **** Part 2 **** Part 3 **** Part 5

A Web Comic Goes Blook - Part 3

I'm continuing my look at Ray Friesen's approach to blooking. Friesen is the author of A Cheese Related Mishap, YARG!, and Another Dirt Sandwich. Soon to be released are The Cupcakes of Doom and Um, I Think Your Piranha Are Broken.

I wrote to Friesen:

"I'm fascinated by the idea of using a distributor - the topic hasn't come up before. Any info on that would be most welcome. Also, I'm curious about your decision to create your own publishing company. I've had several authors who have gone that route for various reasons. I'd love to hear your rationale.

"I, too, self-published my book. Would you tell me (and my readers) what the difficulties were that you encountered (and how you overcame them!)?

One last thing - one of the comic authors/artists that wrote to me said that it was particularly daunting to get a comic into print. Any thoughts on that?

Friesen, ever the gentleman, replied:

"Using a distributor is wonderful, they really help with the bookstore connections (all the big chains and most of the independant stores refuse to deal with an individual author or publisher). Most distributors like companies with an established track record (I now publish 3 or 4 books a year)."

If anyone reading this has comments about their own decision to use or not to use a distributor, I'd love to hear from you. [I'm still waiting to hear from the publicist that one author used]

Friesen echoes several of the folks that I've mailed -- the book was the thing they cared most about, not the company. However, he's taken self-publishing several steps further than most of them.

"I never really decided to start my own company, it was a gradual thing xeroxing copies of my comics for friends, running cartoons in the newspaper, printing higher quantity collections, having a booth at big book and comic shows, professional printing, distribution, it's all sort of snowballed.

"Self-publishing has many difficulties, besides actually writing a book, technical things like ISBNs, convincing distributors and book stores to take a chance on you, working on publicity and promotion, (nobody can buy you book if they don't know it exists!) I just try and overcome them by doing them, and if it doens't work out quite right the first time, I just keep pushing. I've been doing this full time for 3 or 4 years now, and I'm still pretty much making it up as I go along.

"One of the most daunting things about getting a book into print is just affording it. You need to do a high quantity in order to get any sort of good resale price. The best way to get a comic into print is to start small, but think big."

I should note that according to his website, young Mr. Friesen, who has been at it "for 3 or 4 years now," is 19 years old! He's "been professionally cartooning for six years and contributed cartoons to local papers and national publications, as well as several online sites."

I'll be taking a look at the nitty-gritty of the printing process in the next post.

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A Web Comic Goes Blook

Part 1 **** Part 2 **** Part 4 **** Part 5

A Web Comic Goes Blook - Part 2

In my last post I noted that I had written Ray Friesen, author of YARG!, about his entry in the Blooker competition. Young Mr. Friesen graciously replied:

"Actually, the YARG! book that is available now is all new material not derived from the webstrip. The web strip in fact chronicles the events that take place after the book. I do however have plans to collect the webstrips into volume 2. I was thinking of collecting all the strips into book format, maybe cutting 1 or 2, and bulking it up with some new stuff and a conclusion (the strip is a bit open ended.) The story is a narrative, so each strip advances the plot. I don't know if my books are technically blooks, I get them printed in larger quantities, and have a distributor that sells them to the book market. They are self published, I own a small publishing company to handle them. I have done a little searching for a publisher (self publishing is harder than you think) but have chosen to do it completely myself."

Okay, here's what I noted. According to the statement above YARG! is NOT a blook. I wrote back:

"I would agree with your decision that YARG! is not a blook. I don't mean for this to offend you, so please bear with me. You did enter it into the Blooker competition so I'm guessing that that you felt then the book qualified as a blook. Did you feel that the way a blook was described by the Lulu competition was misleading? We've had quite a discussion about it on my blog!"

Just to prove how goofy trying to determine a book's blookhood can be, check out Friesen's response:

"I believe I misunderstood what a blook was. I had a published book, and a blog with comic, all of which had the same characters, and I just assumed it was close enough."

But just to take the goofiness one step further, I've concluded from Friesen's About Page, that YARG! really is a blook. He said there that the book, Cheese Related Mishap, was published, then came the website, then came YARG! Since the characters remained constant, what else could YARG! be other than a blook! Ah me.

So is it a good thing or not that the Lulu Blooker competition leaves it up to the person or publisher submitting the entry as to whether it meets the criteria?

Friesen piqued my interest with his statements that he owns his own company and uses a distributor. I'll take a look at that in the next post.

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A Web Comic Goes Blook
Part 1 **** Part 3 **** Part 4 **** Part 5

A Web Comic Goes Blook - Part 1

It's not even that I'm such a big fan of comics that I've looked at so many blooks based on web comics. The whole phenomenon is beyond me. However, there seems to be a real -- solid -- market; I would be a fool not to try and figure out what the fascination is.

This is a list of those I've looked at so far: Interviews with God; Sluggy Freelance; Totally Boned; Mom's Cancer; Dada Alphabet and Dada Detective; Dinosaur Comics: Huge Eyes, Beaks, Intelligence, and Ambition; The Best of Dinosaur Comics: 2003-2005 AD; Ambidextrous: Collection I; Ambidextrous: Collection II; Mojo the Sock Monkey; and Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!

Two others that I would at least tentatively include are Albert the Third - which is really an illustrated story and Adventures in Whopperland - which is a collection of political cartoons.

I'm sure that there will continue to be blooks as long as comics continue to be posted to the internet -- whether these print-versions are produced by the author/artist or by fans who print pages and collect them! But the main reason for considering the genre this week is the case of Ray Friesen, author of YARG! and other books.

To start with, take a trip to "Don't Eat Any Bugs," Friesen's website. He's posted a book trailer for his newest book, Another Dirt Sandwich. While you might believe that anyone can blook [Blurb et al certainly make it easy for you to turn your blog into a paperback!], the book trailer indicates that for some authors, blooking and publishing are a very big deal. I tend to agree.

For those of you have been following my blog since its beginning, you know that I don't take the designation blook lightly. In fact, several of the books, which were entered into the Lulu Blooker competition, appear not to be blooks at all. So the very first thing I do when I find a title on the competition's list is check to see if it belonged there.

On the About Page at "Don't Eat Any Bugs" Friesen states that "YARG! (The Online Strip) takes place after YARG! (the Graphic-Novel-of-a-Humorous-Persuasion) and features some of the same characters." Is that unclear? The first book was A Cheese Related Mishap: Lookit! Comedy & Mayhem Series Book 1. Then came the website. Then came YARG! Lookit! Comedy & Mayhem Series Book 2. It was the second book that was entered into the Blooker competition. I was reasonably sure that it would turn out to be a blook but I queried the author:

"I have a blog about blooks and found that YARG! had been entered in the Blooker competition. I would be interested in posting whatever you can tell me about how the blook came into being. For instance, does it include a set number of strips that appeared on your
website or blog? How did you choose which ones to include or are they a narrative? Are all your books really blooks? Are they self-published? If not, how did you find a publisher?

I'm going to take the next several posts to explore Friesen's responses.

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A Web Comic Goes Blook

Part 2 **** Part 3 **** Part 4 **** Part 5

Why Do Authors Hate the Word Blook?

Back in July I posted about My Boyfriend is a Twat by Zoe McCarthy. This weekend the author left a comment that it was NOT a blook. Upon reading McCarthy's comment, I responded by saying that I stood corrected. I'm taking that back. I don't know where the aversion to the designation of blook comes from but at the moment I'm just a bit miffed.

Here at Blooking Central I use the definition provided by the Lulu Blooker Prize competition. "The content of your book must have been developed in a significant way online. This can range anywhere from an archive of your blog posts, reproduced verbatim, to general themes, research, or characters." In what way does the Twat book not meet this description? Even the advertisement at The Friday Project supports calling it a blook: "Developed from the hugely popular website My Boyfriend is a Twat, this book is a glorious celebration of living with a complete twat of a boyfriend."

In asserting book not blook, McCarthy referred me to her post of 2 March 2007. Here's a quote:

"And yes, I've been busy doing something else. Another project.

"A book.

"Don't laugh. Me. Book. Asked to write.

"It's not long - about five pages, but it's a book. And now I need to edit it.

"And cry.

"Because I feel sad.

"Bye bye job. Bye bye pain in the fucking neck. I'd be a terrible author if it weren't for the wonderful Clare who has a squeakier voice than me, but has a wonderful bedside manner. Clare is a truly wonderful person, and I'm sure that she is one of many behind the scenes there, but it is with her that I have had the most contact, and I bless and thank her for so many things." [The Clare referred to is Clare Christian of The Friday Project who published McCarthy' book.]

I'm guessing that the offer came AFTER the blog, probably because of the blog. I know, I truly do, that that doesn't make it a blook. [And lucky the author that such an offer comes to!] However, the publication carries the same name as the blog. That's a pretty good hint that it's a blook. Secondly, the theme is similar to or derived from the blog which satisfies the Blooker criteria. And that's good enough for me.
[I apologize for the mix-up on surnames. This post has been corrected.]