Tvindy

Blurbs

People have been asking me about how to format their blurbs. There really aren't any specific rules. In general, they should be in the third person and relatively short. I've reproduced the four I've received thus far below, being careful to strip out real names when they were used. (They'll still be included in the book, of course.) I'm pretty sure Orionoir's blurb was written in jest, since he has spoken of contributing something else. But really, how he can possibly top that?

[Bakerina] is a writer, baker, office worker and underachiever.  She is a graduate of Chatham College and Peter Kump's New York Cooking School, and was the 2004 American Egg Board Fellow at the Writer's Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.  She lives in New York City with her husband and too many books.

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[Author] (aka Bloody Morty Vane) is a 30-something business analyst by day and a 20-something minded guitar addict, gadget junkie, Mac freak, amateur chef, leftist political pundit, scooter fiend, and personal shopper by night.  While he spends his days training military executives in program and knowledge management, he spends every other moment researching guitars, gadgetry, recipes and reeling in the many foibles of our so called leaders.

[author] was turned on to Blogging in 1999 and has been in love, and obsessed, ever since.
Over time his blogs have evolved from typical Blogger rantiness to a bizarre peak into his daily life via his Word Press powered Bossa Nova blog at Circa1973.net

Blogging has afforded him the opportunity to connect with a like minded community of, truthfully, some of the best dorks (and now friends) on the planet.

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Youngest of One currently attends Regis High School in Manhattan, where he is often intimidated by the teeming masses and immense buildings. He resides in Queens, New York, where things get pretty dull, with the exception of his crazy neighborhood friends. He has written for to two consecutive weblogs, both entitled “Youngest of One,” since late September 2003. His family would appreciate it if you didn't hunt him down.

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i know in only a very superficial and tangential way mr wally lamb, who is both a local celeb and the ultimate patron saint of hopeful writers the world over. before he was discovered on oprah (well, not literally on her, he was on her show) he was a high school teacher by day and a persistently undistinguished writer of short fiction by day. lots of his stuff was printed for nothing in local newspapers, i doubt anyone could have seen the fame and fortune coming, but boy did it come.

anyhow, my conclusion is that fame is random. with lamb i think his first book had a magic title (she's come undone) (it didn't even matter that it was borrowed) and equally intoxicating cover art. the book itself imho was a not too well pasted together assemblage of stuff alternately new and stale, i don't think anyone burned the midnight oil stitching it together. still, it was such a cool object with wh to walk around, i must have given away five copies trying to get sex, makes you wonder re the kind of sex oprah gets.

I've run out of original titles for book update posts

The book still has a bit more work to go before I publish it, but it's shaping up nicely. (Actually, I'm in awe of it.) Yesterday I pasted in all the entries and found myself making a few tentative editorial decisions which I'd like to run by everyone to see if they're okay.

• Snowball definitely needed a third entry, so I chose this one, because it's interesting, thought-provoking, funny, and nicely complements the other two.
• Bill only had one, so I added this one and changed the name of the bank to "Bank of Blech" to protect against being sued.
• I added my recent Mexico post, since it seemed to be popular, and I'm considering adding the Brazilian Soap Operas entry as well, but I would need someone to second it for me to be confident enough to put it in.
• Bakerina already had three entries, but there was one I've been thinking about a lot lately that I felt just had to go in. It's this one, but to add it I had to remove one of the three original entries. I ended up removing this one. I hope that's okay.
• There was one entry that I really agonized over before ultimately removing it, and that was James' ghost story. It definitely is a good read, but when I pasted it into the book and saw just how many pages it took up in relation to the other entries, it seemed to overshadow so much of the other stuff.

What all of these decisions have in common is that, while I feel they are correct and important, I recognize that I don't have the authority to make them, especially the last one, so please feel free to argue any and all of the above points in the comments section. Anything that is not disagreed with will remain as is by default.

Once I get the book assembled, all the contributors will get to see a finalized digital version before it goes into print, so they can check for problems. Don't bother checking the book page for updates on content, since I haven't updated it for some time.

I haven't heard from Deek for a few days, and he never gave a final okay to include his material, so I'm holding off on adding it until he says something definitive. Also, there was talk of getting Owen and Tequila Mockingbird to take part. I never heard anything more about or from them, so I'm working under the assumption that they haven't expressed consent to use their material.

Don't forget to send me your "About the Author" blurb if you haven't already. Also, let me know what name you wish to use.

A Very Short Book Update

For the past several hours I've been throwing myself into the task of assembling the book. It really is amazing to see all those brilliant posts side-by-side like that. I was afraid it might turn out to be a bit short, and it is, but not overly so. It will definitely be over 100 pages long and perhaps as much as 150 pages. I'll write in much more detail about the contents tomorrow.

People were recently asking me about deadlines for submitting blurbs and making changes. There is no set date, but this is how things will play out. Once I have the contents of the book fully assembled and formatted, I will upload it to the publisher. I will also e-mail all the contributors with a link to download the Word file where they can fully inspect it. The publisher will send me a single sample copy to inspect. At that point, I can still make changes, but once I give the okay to publish, we are pretty much locked into a final version. For now, though, we've still got some time.

Don't forget to send me your blurbs.

Book Cover

Getting back to the book project, here's a rough draft of the cover. I'm very happy with some aspects of it. Others could do with a bit of improvement. I'd be very grateful if those of you who are participating could give feedback, so I know I'm at least in the ballpark with this design.

More Book Project Stuff

Deek Deekster left a lengthy comment to last week's book update post in which he raises a lot of really good points, some of which I hadn't yet considered. I've reproduced it here:

My points re: the book.

1. Of course make a dollar!

2. the book's USP (unique selling point) is PRECISELY that it has been evaluated and constructed by bloggers using word-of-blog, which makes it way cool and unique. maybe the title could reflect that to the non-blog world. somehow. i'm thinking.

3. Plan for success. I may be being rather immodest here on behalf of everyone, but the standard of writing in all of these is higher than a lot of stuff in traditional print. I think we need to relax about being brilliant and expect to impress other people JUST A LITTLE BIT. Why not send the book to a REAL publisher once it's available via cafepress/lulu self-publishing?

4. We also should think about the format and how repeatable it is. And again, if it succeeds bigger than just a few copies, whether we have an original enough format to protect it commercially.

5. In any case, we need to construct an agreement which:

a. states each author has copyright in her/his own work, and that the collective copyright in the book is jointly owned by all - or by the editor on behalf of all (or something like that)

b. states the way in which (if the book is republished and/or is distributed and succeeds commercially) individual contributors will share the revenue.

c. maintains the integrity of the project in the case of further commercial exploitation, i.e. so that original contributors work cannot be removed or edited, so that the central ideas about how to present the work are continued.

I'm not a lawyer but I know that if suddenly multiple thousands of dollars are involved, we'll be glad we thought ahead and agreed upfront to something equitable which allowed for commercial exploitation.

Although you may think this far-fetched right now, I've seen it in music before, when a really nice little project with something excellent about it, some measure of the pulse of the time, just hits the population and goes ballistic. I'm not saying this WILL succeed like that - but it has a chance to, and it might. Why not?

cheers

Deek.

Here are my thoughts. (And I hope others who are participating will chime in as well.)

My hope is that if the book is a huge success (a very big if), it will take off incrementally rather than exponentially, so we have time to adapt. As I've said before, I'm hoping this can be an annual publication eventually resulting in several volumes. This first one is the proof-of-concept. For the 2006 version, I'd like to see some of us form a committee, so that all the selections are chosen by a group, and the financial issues are less centralized. I would want to participate on that committee but not as someone with higher authority than the other members. For example, I definitely would not want to President if such a position existed. I'm a bit uncomfortable with how much control I've had for this first volume, but I suppose this is to be expected in the beginning.

I agree that a written agreement would be the way to go, but ideally I should not be the one to compose it. Deek, would you like to write up a rough draft? I will include the main points in the introduction as well, so that every reader has access to it. One point Deek brings up that I hadn't considered is that we need to make it clear that all the material contributed is the property of the individual contributors. That would prevent another publisher from trying to buy up the material from a single source.

In terms of profits, all money made will be distributed equally among all the contributors. (This is after the first $149, which will go toward funding the 2006 version.) If the project suddenly starts generating thousands of dollars, everyone will receive an equal share. I give my word on that here; I will state it again in the introduction to the book; and I am willing to sign a statement to that effect and mail it to whoever requests it. (Ideally the wording would be determined by one of more of the contributors.) Also, I am covering the publishing costs out-of-pocket for the first book to show good faith.

Once again, if great success comes, it will probably only come with time. (At least I hope so.) There already exists a very similar book, so we won't have the advantage that comes with being first. Of course, there are all sorts of things we can do to market the book once it comes out. As Deek suggested, we could even send some copies out to big publishing companies.

Whatever we do at this point needs to be done quickly. I said I would try very hard to have the book order placed before the end of January. This week has been hectic for me, though, and I will only have a chance to start assembling everything on Monday (the 31st). Once the order has been placed, a physical sample copy will be sent to me to evaluate, and I will still be able to make changes at that point before giving the final okay.

What I need from all the contributors as soon as possible (I asked for this earlier) is a brief about-the-author blurb on yourself and your blog written in the third person. (Otherwise I will have to write it, and it may not be what you want.) Additionally, I need to know what name or pseudonym you want to use to identify yourself. For some people that's fairly obvious; for others, not so much.

Feedback is definitely welcome.

Eugene Weblogger Meetup

Kat did it; Shanna did it; and Michael did it. I guess it's time I did it as well. Click here to see my pics of last week's Eugene Weblogger Meetup.

Book Project Update

I haven't mentioned the book project in awhile. Rest assured, I'm still doing it, and I intend to have it submitted to Lulu.com before (or, more likely, at) the end of January. I really should have created a single entry to explain the book project for the benefit of people just now tuning in, but I didn't. If you want to get up to speed, here are the relevant posts:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

There's not much to add. A couple of points have been raised over e-mail. The first concerns the issue of royalties, or, more specifically, that I need to thoroughly address the money issues before anything goes to print. I've covered this in part already, but now I'll get as specific as I can. The book will be released at cost. This means no royalties. Then, if we sell over a hundred copies within six months, I'm thinking we can add a dollar to the cover price. (This is simple to do.) Selling at cost for the first few months will give all the participants an opportunity to purchase copies for themselves, their friends and family, and maybe even their local libraries without paying one cent more than they have to. Also, the low price may entice more potential readers to order copies. If we sell enough copies quickly enough and end up making royalties, the first $149 will be used to finance publication of the second volume of the book in 2006. If we end up earning any money beyond that, then things get complicated. Dividing even a substantial sum among several people could be a real headache and would probably result in inconsequential amounts. ($300 divided 15 ways would only be 20 per person.) Unless we reach the point where each author would get at least $50, it might be better to just donate the funds to some charity we can all agree on. In this case, we would designate someone (other than me) as the treasurer; the money would be sent to them; and they would deposit it and write up a check from their account to the charity. They would then document the payment, perhaps by scanning and posting the receipt. If the book does become wildly successful, then the profits would be divided equally among the contributors regardless of the relative amount of material (number of entries) contributed by each. I doubt profits will ever be a major issue. (To me, selling a mere one hundred would be a great accomplishment in and of itself.) Is everyone okay with this arrangement?

The second issue that was raised was what to do if a contributor is uncomfortable with some of the other material in the book and does not want to be associated with it. I suggested a disclaimer at the beginning of the book stating each contributor, by the mere fact of allowing his/her work to appear in the book, does not necessarily endorse, agree with, or find amusing the work of his/her fellow authors. The person who e-mailed me with this concern said he/she was satisfied with the idea of a disclaimer.

Also, today I got permission to add a bit more material to the book. Tonight I went to another meeting of the Eugene Webloggers Meetup, and asked Michael if he would be willing to contribute, and he said yes. There are two bits of material that I consider extremely bookworthy. (Hopefully everyone agrees.) The first is the Victoria's Secret panty saga comprised of this entry, this letter, and the followup. The other one is this post. The original title was much better, being simply "I Want My Damn Baby", and Michael has agreed to allow it to be published under that title.

Also, I'd like people's opinions on this entry, which was composed by one of my students. I think it's delightful, and I'd have enjoyed it even if I didn't know the first thing about Portuguese. But then again, I tend to like anything related to language. I doubt it would appeal to most readers, but I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on it.

Other Blog

Now that I'm teaching, I decided to make one of the main requirements for passing my Beginning Portuguese class to be participation in a class blog. I'd like to encourage people to check it out from time to time and leave comments. I'm hoping that when the students see that people out in the world are actually reading their entries, it will encourage them to write more. (So far only one student has contributed.)

I tried this once before with my classmates in the advanced Portuguese class. Everyone thought it was a great idea at the time, but I was the only one to ever write anything in it.

Candyfreak!

Inspired by Bakerina's post on the book Candyfreak (of which I listened to the audiobook), I resolved to return to my candy loving roots by doing something truly freaky. Right before I returned home for Christmas, I had a bunch of meal points that I needed to use up. Just for the heck of it, I decided to see how much candy I could get for them. Pictured above is the result.

Does this make me a bona fide candyfreak? Probably not, since I didn't actually eat most of the candy. Instead I took it home with me and left it at my parents' house in a large glass bowl as a Christmas contribution to the family. About ninety percent of it was consumed by a visiting aunt in about a week's time.

Weekly Book Update II

I received some interesting feedback to yesterday's post, so I'll use today's entry to respond to it and talk some more about the book. (That subject never gets old, right?)

First of all, Alicia e-mailed me some selections from her blog, and I thought I would post them here, so people can offer feedback on them or suggest other entries by her. The first one is her preferred choice:

• in the third place
• World AIDS Day, a day late
• you say it's your birthday
• pensiveness
• I'm mad too, Eddie

Schmed made some suggestions for entries from my blog. Most of them were centered on photos, so I don't think they would work well in the book. (Although it might be interesting to someday publish a similar book that featured photographic entries.) I'm also a bit nervous about publishing the John Edwards post, since the word "fucktards" would appear in the title completely divorced from its proper context. But he did like the Cherry Coke post, which I had long ago forgotten, and Jason seconded it. So I guess that's one for the book.

There was also some discussion on how the book was to be organized. Will properly remembered the format that I had outlined previously, but I'll take this opportunity to describe it in more depth. Remember, none of this is set in stone, so if anyone disagrees with my ideas or has additional suggestions, please feel free to speak up.

The Title: I'm still working on this, so please feel free to make suggestions. I'm thinking something along the lines of this: "Gems from Blogdom: a compendium of outstanding writing by people who blog"

The Cover: Several of the entries have images associated with them (Chunderpuss, the accidental pie, Angry Sugar Bowl, etc.). These will be arranged over the front and back covers with no explanation. As people read the book, they will start recognizing what each one is. The title will be on the front, and a brief explanation of the book will be on the back. "Volume I" will also be printed somewhere, since the hope is that we put out one of these puppies every year for the next century or two.

The Sequence: The entries will be arranged in a random-like order. In other words, there won't be any pattern, such as by author, theme or date. At the same time, it won't be completely random. Care will be taken to keep each entry from immediately following posts by the same author. Also, very long posts will be kept separate as will any entries with similar themes or moods. I'm thinking of starting with The Legend of Chunderpuss for two reasons. First, anyone who reads that will definitely be enticed into checking out more entries. And second, it begins with "It was a dark and stormy night..." (Isn't that a great opening line for the book?)

The Format: Each post will start at the top of a fresh page with the title in bold. Paragraphs will be distinguished by indenting (as is normal in books) rather than by spacing between them (standard for blogs). At the end of the entry will be the author's name or pseudonym and the date that the post was originally composed. There will be no URLs in this section.

About the Authors: At the end of the book will be an "About the Authors" section. Each contributor will be asked to submit a paragraph written in the third person stating anything they feel is relevant (or entertaining) to the readers about themselves and their blog. This is where the blogs' main URLs will be printed.

Introduction: This is where I blather on endlessly about the purpose and significance of our great œuvre.

Table of Contents: This is pretty straightforward. There will be an ordered list at the beginning of the book listing each title and the page on which the entry begins. There will also be a secondary table of contents (after the first) listing the posts by author.

Sometime in January (probably not the beginning), I'll submit the material for publication. It will be published at cost to make it as affordable as possible. (This means there will be no profits.) I have been thinking, though, that we may want to add a dollar to the price if people actually start buying it. That way we can finance the next volume. That's something we can think about later.

If we do this again next year, I'd like to have some of this year's contributors volunteer to work together as a committee to help find, suggest and select entries. That would save me a lot of work and make the process more democratic.

Tomorrow I will make a point of writing about something (anything) completely unrelated to the book project.