What I'm writing here is more like a blook than a blog.
A blook is an online book. A blog is an online- something-else. But what is the difference, actually? If you take more than 50 written pages (of poetry, for example) and bind them - it's a book, right? If you have more than 50 postings on your blog and you print and bind them - it's a book, right? You may say that blooks and blogs have links while books are link less but it doesn't seem to be an essential or crucial difference.
I Once thought about publishing blogs in paper-back and I still believe that in the future some of the 30 million blogs or so will become books, but the main difference between a blook and a blog is the intention: a blog posting is meant to express itself, with no commitment to the other postings, with no overall architecture or message or order. It is more like flirt than marriage.
Usually a blog is like a diary. You write about something that you felt like writing, without putting too much planning into it. Then you write another posting that pushes all the previous postings backwards, and conquers the head of the blog page… until the next posting. When you look back at your, say, 10 postings you might see that there's a link between them, that they all talk about your girlfriend, for example, but you know that it's not a book.
Blogs cling on the moment, on the present – they have no special interest in the future or the permanent. When you read a blog that was written three years ago most chances are that it lost its edge (unless you have interest in history). Blooks aim at writing evergreen postings. In a blook that declares its bloogness there is some development, and the more postings you read the overall picture and concept become clearer. Nevertheless any blog that is composed of evergreen postings has the potential to become a blook or a book.
In my case I think I'll only have to choose the best postings, to arrange them in chapters, to convert the links to notes, to add introduction and bibliography, to print and bind and voila – the book is ready. I also have a name for it: The Star of David Blook.
1 comment:
If you simply want to make money by pulling posts and binding them, there's lots of software out there to do that. But you're right. A blook (to my mind) is comprised of evergreen posts.
If you have gotten around to creating your blook, please let me know. My blog, Blooking Central, is devoted to blooks and transformation software.
Post a Comment