Have you heard about blooks ?

A blook is a printed and bound book, based on a blog.

Most famous ones are from 'Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi' (Grove Press), the eye-witness accounts of the Iraq war by the blogger known as Salam Pax, 'Small Pieces Loosely Joined' (Perseus Books), Dan Gillmor's "We The Media" (O'Reilly), David Weinberger's spiritual interpretation of the Internet, actor Wil Wheaton's memoir 'Just a Geek' (O'Reilly), and Jessica Cutler's 'The Washingtonienne' (Hyperion), a novel based on her scandalous blog of the same name. More scandalous still is 'Belle de Jour: The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl, by Anon' (Phoenix), which started life as an infamous blog, describing the life of a north London prostitute, and read by 15,000 a day.

It seems like more than 100 blooks have been published till now, there is now also "The Blooker Prize" that has been launched on the 10th of October 2005, the world's first literary prize for blooks, organized by Lulu, a website that enables anyone to publish and sell their own book. (well, yes, that's linked...)

The prize will reward blooks in three categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction and Comic-Blooks, it is open to blooks published anywhere by anyone, provided they are in English (Loïc, you should translate your blook in english to compete against Scoble's and Shell's one !)

Judges will be: Cory Doctorow, co-editor of BoingBoing, Robin Miller, editor-in-chief of Slashdot and Paul Jones, director of iBiblio.

The Lulu Blooker Prize will take place annually. The short list of books for the inaugural prize will be announced in March 2006 and the winner on 3 April, 2006.

Know what, there is an additional step: Flooks ! Film based on blooks ! ;o)

Technorati Tags: blook

Comments

[Mones]

Too bad Lulu only goes for blooks that have also been published on paper.
I'll have to wait a little while with my blook than....

[Kestrel]

I hadn't heard of Blooks before, but now that you mention it, it seems like the next logical step in the blogosphere. I guess the only question I have is: why would I buy someones Blook when I could just read their blog for free? Do they add extra material to their Blooks?

[Guillaume du Gardier]

I think it's mainly because it's not really comfortable to read a whole book on your screen. It's interesting to participate in the early stage of it's development, but as soon as you like the flavour of it, you'll buy it on Amazon. To have the "real" book" in your hand. It seems to me that the "revolution" of blooks is much more in this participatory way to write them, rather in the final "blook" itself.

[Jasmine]

I don't know about others, but having a hardcopy / book still had its magic compared to reading an ebook.