Blogs As Books
Om Malik has published a PDF version of his 20 most popular blog posts in 2005. The graphic design is fresh, very magazine-y, and as usual for Om, it’s interesting reading. But that’s not the most interesting thing about this work.
It’s fascinating how the exact same blog content somehow looks more authoritative when presented in a book context. The words are the same, the formatting and context is different.
You already know of one (long-tail) blog that’s a march toward writing a book. For a subject like that, the book is probably the right way to extract money from the author’s effort. Whether Om Malik will fnd takers who pay for the collection of blog posts will be an interesting experiment.
I suspect not. Much of blogging is transitory, in and of the moment. As good as the ideas may be, absent more research and “fleshing out” I suspect blog books will read like what they are, yesterday’s news and commentary.
Or maybe I am just jealous?
[via Allied]