Blog to Book

This essay was written as a response paper for my Personal Media class at Houghton College. In it, we are to read an article (see the link below) and respond to it with what we have been learning about how we communicate in with new digital tools.

Good job?

With personal media tools cheaper and more accessible than ever, anyone has the ability to have their voices heard. With the rise of blogs, more and more people are able to show off their writing skills to the world (I’ll be posting this essay to my blog as well). With more people writing, are more being noticed? Are the ones being noticed worth being noticed?

Christian Lander has been noticed; his blog “Stuff White People Like” gained a book deal for $300,000. I looked around online for a bit to find the average book deal price, and it can range from $1,000 to $1,000,000, but most new writers don’t get past $100,000. Why does Lander get such a deal? Because his blog gets 1.5 million hits? Is that the new standard for book deals? Is it a good one?

Book publishers are hoping so. They want to see those million hits become sales and who could blame them. By signing Lander, they have a new author with a built in fanbase. The issue isn’t the publisher’s intentions, they need to make a profit and don’t want to take risky chances. The issue is whether or not bloggers make for the best writers. Taking Lander as an example, his blog is a topic-a-day format commenting on things that he believes most white people enjoy for comedic effect. While the blog could be called racist, I found it to be slightly funny, all though frivolous in content, like a joke calendar you laugh at, quote a few times, and move on from. As a blog, the concept works great, everyday there’s a new topic to laugh at and forget the next. As a book, you have a set number of commentaries that don’t change. As the article stated, the blog to book process hasn’t turned out to be very profitable on average. Books based on other blogs, such as Gawker.com, have sold disappointingly low, in the low thousands with few gaining large readership offline.

Here we have aspiring writers being noticed, though not always with the greatest results. Though blogger enthusiast might hate to admit it, there may be a difference between amateur blogging and professional writing that isn’t so easy to close the gap to. One of the reasons Lander was published was because his blog was so unblog-like. Other blogs, such as Skull-A-Day, are photoblogs getting book deals. It would seem that in order to get a book deal with a blog, one must learn to not write like a blogger.

I have a blog and I would be lying if I said I never wanted it to be noticed. Many times I have thought about doing something with my blog that would attract attention and gain me more fame then I have now. I also like hearing about people finding new ways to get their writing noticed, because it gives me more hope for myself, but what about the quality of writing? Sure, publishers are bringing a fanbase to them, but are they going to attract new fans? By looking for easy sales, are they lowering their standards? I doubt very much that “Stuff White People Like” would have been given $300,000 had it been sent in to a publishing house the old fashion way. It might have been noticed and published, but for much less, I’m sure.

There is good to be found. The fact that people are being noticed by blogging show that new personal media works; perhaps not as well as some had hoped it would, but it shows promise. People can get their work and ideas out and gain success in ways they couldn’t before. Most people who write blogs just want to have their voice heard and don’t focus on their style, so much as find their style. This creates a sense of uniqueness to many blogs and helps show their differences. But, how many imitators will now be trying to replicate Lander? Blogs will start looking like all other forms of media; mostly passable with few exceptions of creativity. Could the blog to book process create an indie-blogging genre; of smart blogs going unnoticed while more accessible blogs make the real money? If this happens, I think blogging will end up missing the point.