From blog to book deal.
Posted by Caroline Chen | May 4, 2009
I guess the Internets has done the same thing for unsigned artists as it has for moonlighting authors. More and more bloggers are seeing their creativity pay off not only in traffic, but also in book deals:
Tucker Max (NSFW, unless you have a conveniently inward-facing desk.)
Keep reading about the Stuff Everyone Likes: cold-hard cash.
Some of these have been pretty sweet deals for a personal blogging habit; NY Times reported that Stuff White People Like blogger Christian Lander received an estimated $300,000 for his dead-on/controversial observations (“#14: Having Black Friends”).
I find myself tempted to buy these books, despite logic telling me that I can read/have already read this stuff online — for free-ee. I did, however, buy Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell during a flight delay (you could say that I was in a self-loathing mood), plunging me into the darkest memoirs of the foulest male psyche ever, and I’m still traumatized to this day. And yes, I totally finished the book in less than 24 hours. (Liken it to a car wreck. With B-squad strippers.)
A happy result from these blog-to-book success stories is the DIY mentality of bypassing publishers entirely, thanks to services like Lulu. That’s what prolific Twitter user James Bridle did, creating the first ever “Tweetbook,” aptly titled My Life In Tweets. Not exactly skyrocketing up the NYT Best Sellers, but sort of gets you thinking: is my stuff good enough for print?
Blogging is a waste of time, a diversion from “real” work, and bloggers who go full-time are just lucky bastards. Meanwhile, books are revered, signed, preserved in libraries for posterity — the key to immortality, even. The goal still remains to be in print. It makes living in this age of touting instant gratification, timestamps and 140-character limits quite the paradox. (Heyy, like a Tweetbook!) The more blogs/pulses I read, the more I crave quality time with a 600-page paperback. Sometimes just to salvage a brain cell.
Digital backlash? Nay. The attention span will continue to splinter to the point in which I will be furious if someone’s status isn’t updated by the minute…as they’re sitting two feet away. There is a pathetically severe need for cats with fifty things balanced on them, celebrity fug, and . Maybe blogs give us the opportunity to consume vapor without judgment. Maybe I don’t need the validation of a book club, nor pretend to like Jane Austen because I have two X chromosomes. Maybe I can make an anti-Jane Austen blog and eventually publish it with Lulu. Maybe someday. Someday.
Blogosphere: the new land of opportunity.
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