From the blog to the book is a reprint of a NY Times Article. A blogger writing a book? Isn’t there something strangely converse going on here? After all, people visit blogs because — instead of being static, like books — they’re regularly updated, sometimes on the hour.
True, but I’m Not the New Me is joining a growing list of born-from-blog book deals. Over the last few years, this genre has produced everything from novels and memoirs, such as Mimi Smartypants’ The World According to Mimi Smartypants, and how-to manuals like The Weblog Handbook by renowned San Francisco blogger Rebecca Blood. Actor Wil Wheaton has even published two books compiled from entries off his popular Web log.
It’s not so hard…
It’s not too hard to self publish something like that, even on a small scale setup. I wanted to free up some room on my server for my blog. I also condensed three blogs into one for ease of updating because I just don’t have the time I used to. (School, work, and a one year old boy does that to you.) But I didn’t want to just dump the stuff, for two reasons. One, I worked pretty hard on that damn blog and wrote a bunch of stuff that took time and thought. I really didn’t want to just “rm *.* ; cd.. ; rmdir blog” after all that time. Two, a couple of my friends actually wanted the stuff. (I still don’t know why, but I’m sure alcohol is involved.)
Well, fortunately, Adobe Acrobat has this nifty feature. Basically it lets you fetch a webpage or a website, download it, and create a PDF from it. It does a pretty fine job of it too. So I did that, sorted everything out like I wanted it, placed some bookmarks for ease of access, and voila you have yourself something that, for all intents and purposes, is an e-book. Print it out, bind it, and you have a book. And most publishers have no problem with PDF formats.
So I’m leaving the archive on my server for a month or so. Then I’ll take it offline and stick up a link for those interested in obtaining a copy of the archive. (That’ll happen.) And ta-da! More space available! And, apparently, I wrote a book!
Interesting side note, the PDF came to 1,040 pages of material. Not bad for someone who wasn’t even trying to generate pages of content. Coincidentally, 1,040 happens to be the same number of the income tax form I filed this year. Wierd, huh?
“Strangely converse”?
I don’t think so. (Repeat my mantra, “And, not or”)
It’s never been an either-or question. Quite a few blogs consist mostly or entirely of book reviews, “net media” focused on “old media.” Nothing unnatural or peculiar there.
Quite a few blogs are largely narrative, rather than being sets of links with quick annotations. Such blogs may be candidates for compilation (hopefully with editing!) into book form, for a variety of reasons including ease of long-form reading (and maybe a little income?). Nothing really peculiar there either.
Some of the best science fiction books originated as series of short stories or novelettes/novellas (e.g., Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy). In some cases, the stories were written with the intention of making a book. In others, the book was a not-originally-intended consequence.
I believe this is a similar situation. Net media allow anyone to get into the essay/short form game pretty easily. For some of us, putting those short forms together into a longer form makes sense.
Re:It’s not so hard…
In fact it’s even easier than that:
There you go. One command instead of three.
Not uncommon
I read a number of blogs from authors and aspiring authors where they post snippets of works or even serialized novels. Seems like a great testing ground where you can work out some of the kinks of the writing process, and get instant, continous feedback.
Re:It’s not so hard…
Ahh thank you. 🙂 I’m still a Linux geek in training. I’ve got friends who are gurus and are just happy as hell that I use it in the first place.