Exploding books: The blooking of the world
Shane Richmond at the Telegraph notes the spread of blooks to Europe: “Blood, Sweat and Tea is the first book (or blook, if you must) from a major European publisher to be published under a Creative Commons licence.” It’s a book out of a blog about the life of an ambulance worker. Says Shane:
Of course many publishers will be aghast at the idea of giving their books away. In this case the publishers have nothing to lose because all of the book’s content is freely available on Reynolds blog in any case.Nevertheless, it’s encouraging to see a publisher taking such an innovative approach. It’s the ones who experiment that will survive the online world, not the ones who stick rigidly to the traditional business models.
August 22nd, 2006 at 11:50 am
Richard Charkin of Macmillan blogged about it. The first two comments on the post are not exactly enthusiastic.
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:08 pm
Major European publisher eh!. The minor ones have been doing it for years. So where is the news in this…it is that major European publishers have not understood what is happening to them.
August 22nd, 2006 at 4:15 pm
The point is really that many, many publishers are viewing online publishing as a threat rather than an opportunity. We’re not necessarily expecting to be right in our approach but we are hoping to bring some recognition and understanding of the importance of supporting, indeed cultivating web opportunities rather than closing our eyes and hoping they will go away.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:40 pm
[...] Case in point, Jeff Jarvis points to a Telegraph post about a London blogger and EMT who’s converted his blog to a book and released it for free under the Creative Commons license. [...]
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:47 am
It’s a bigger phenomenon than just this latest book.
Last November, the same publisher released a blog anthology edited by UK blogger Tim Worstall, who created a collection of some of the best material from many British blogs based on his weekly “Britblog Roundup” post.
And the biggest blook story in London right now is probably a newspaper’s unmasking of the pseudonymous author of a rather different blook, by The Girl With a One-Track Mind.