When I started Blooking Central it was because I was intrigued by the concept of creating a book from blogs. The blogs that I was aware of (and particularly the blogs that I maintained) were such a random mishmash of topics and styles that I couldn't begin to imagine trying to make them into anything coherent like a book.
That's the crux of my defense of the definition that a blook is something that is hard copy -- dead tree. I wanted to know how a blog could morph into print. What did a writer need to do with all that content that they had generated over weeks, months and years? Did writers even know that their blogs had the potential for a different audience?
I blithely began looking at popular works, many of them entered in the Lulu Blooker Prize competitions. I discovered many things but perhaps the most important was this -- most fiction blooks, identified by their author as blooks, had appeared on blogs or websites in pre-meditated serial fashion. There was no mystery here as to how the text then transitioned to print. Even if the content was revised, the narrative arc survived.
I confess that this area has little interest for me. My quest was to discover how to take blog content, those random musings, those conversations with readers, etc., and transform them into something a reader would want to own. Which is why I've spent many posts on software and organizing content. Unless an ordinary blogger (not a fiction author) is blogging thematically, the question of clustering content is huge.
Have I still not made my case? Let me try to explain another way. It's the process of manipulating the daily data that intrigues me most and the objective of producing a print product provides a boundary necessary for me. This is also important when I look at traditionally published blooks because I can feature agents who have seemed to have focused on blog content like Kate Lee and Elizabeth Weed. I can publish letters from publishers like The Friday Project who have a keen interest in blogs. Keeping print in my definition allows me to explore what a blookable blog might look like.
Think about it for a moment, why make an eBook of your blog when the blog is there? Unless you're talking about making money. Which doesn't seem to be the driving reason behind authorship. I would guess that the majority of blook authors that I've looked at (over 250 now) are most concerned with the quality of the work that they're producing, then the reception of that work, and lastly financial gain.
But maybe the bottom line is that I'm just more comfortable with a print parameter. An eBook can be continually revised. Kathleen Dixon Donnelly mentioned that just the other day in my Q & A with her. An author can call his or her work "done" but because of the lack of physicality, it doesn't have to be. With a dead tree version it does.
So there you have it. One old lady's opinion on why a blook should be a printed version of blogged content.
Follow-up
As a courtesy I sent a copy of the above off to Carl Jeffries, who sparked this defense (see My Definition of Blook). Here's his response:"Now that you've explained your reasoning, I find it to be a quite valid argument. Now you're talking about WHY to make "blook" your definition, not just that it should, you know? I can see a lot of value in that transformational process."I'd like you to put a short bit by me at the end if you would, basically saying:
"Hey, I can totally see the value of your definition now, and it sounds like you're really onto something. That transformational process of online-journal-to-print is pretty darn neat. I think we're talking from two different angles here, as I'm totally in love with the idea of web fiction, so I don't want to see "blook" seem to disparage online web fiction. But I think whoever wins the battle for the word "blook" (if it doesn't end up meaning both) will find another word for theirs. And who wants an awkward word like "blook" anyway?"
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