April 4, 2006
Your Blog: Between Covers
Does your blog have a consistent theme? Do you write well? Do you think your blog has the makings of a book?
If you answered yes to one or more of the above then a publisher may be looking for you:
Publishing types have continued toiling away in the industry’s underground laboratory, feverishly trying to alchemize blogging, hoping to prove that the common base metal of user-generated-content that the kids seem to enjoy so much (you know, those “web logs”) can be turned into the gold of bestsellerdom (you know, real books, sold in large numbers).Michael Schaub, writing at BookSlut, puts a bit of perspective on this:
Basically, if you have a moderately uncrappy LiveJournal page, and are capable of writing a book proposal even slightly more elegant than "I am a blogger, and I want to write a book based on my blog, and blogs are great blog blog blog blog BLOGBLOGBLOG," you need to find a way to get on board this gravy train before it crashes with tragicomic results.What might be a big seller? Well so far adventures in the kitchen (54,000 copies) sell much better than adventures in Washington, DC bedrooms (14,000 copies).
No illusions here at Modulator...based on posts to date such publication wouold fall under the vanity, all is vanity category.
Posted by Steve on April 4, 2006Comments
I understand that Lulu.com is a vanity publisher. What seems possible is that good writers might use their blogs as a platform for publishing. Publishers want to know that you have an audience, so having a popular blog is advantageous.
The trick with the platform thing is not to give it all away free. There has to be some reason for people to buy the book.
Posted by Aloysius Katz at April 4, 2006 5:38 PM
