The NY Times ran an article on blogs/sites moving into printed products. Pretty interesting though nothing really new is mentioned. They don’t even mention the word “blook“. Which is a book mainly consisting of blog posts (and one word I hope never makes it into the dictionary). Basically some marketing folks look at a blog’s traffic stats and see dollar signs, but over the last two years, publishers have realized that a high number of unique visitors does not always translate into dollars.
Though it seems that comics and illustrations do seem to do better than fiction and narratives.
Basically, Frank Warren (of Post Secret fame) summed-up the whole business model when he is quoted in the article saying “I don’t think there is a formula,” Mr. Warren said. “There is a bit of magic there that can’t be replicated.”
I should have posted this a couple of weeks ago, because by now I think we’re all listed out. But it’s new to me and I thought it a pretty cool thing. It’s a site and meta-list that’s new to me. It lists all of the “best of 2007” lists on the web. It’s constantly changing.
As of this post, 66 “best books of 2007” lists, have been submitted. But there are whole bunch more topics to read through too. The best food blogs was another of my favorite categories.
So now you can self-publish a book with them and they’ll help broker ad deals, kinda like you would for placing ads on your blog, I think. I guess book publishers got tired of seeing all the rich folks sitting over at the magazine publisher’s table and decided to hop on the train.
The folks over at GalleyCat posted a link to mediabistro’s design blog unbeige which featured a year-end wrap up of Chip Kidd highlights. If you’re interested in bookcover design, Kidd news is always colorful and insightful.
I especially liked this article in The Telegraph, but only in the celeb-news junkie kinda way. Not sure why it’s important that I know what Kidd has over his sofa, but I enjoyed the piece none-the-less. Sort of a pop-ish look, at the man that puts out some of the best book covers, on the planet.
Also, here is a link to the USA Today page which is posting the serialized version of Kidd’s sophomore novel effort The Lerners.
