Are You a Blooker?

Amazing how the English language just keeps growing! Blook, blooking, blooker. Hands up if you are already using these words in your daily conversations.

Not many of you.

That's because this is a relatively new phenomenon.

A blook is either

a book serialized on a blog OR
a book made from a blog

Blooking is the act of creating a blook.

A blooker is either

the person who writes a blook

with a capital B, a prize from Lulu.com for the best blook.

Writing A Blook

A writer can create a blook in at least two ways.

Put up a work, chapter by chapter. Each chapter is finished before it goes up.

Dickens would have loved this! Visitors keep coming back, hopefully on a schedule to read the next installment.

Put up the work in progress.

The first winner of the Blooker Prize did just that. Julie Powell wrote about her experience working her way through Julia Child's cookbook. Readers commented and encouraged her.

The Money

Although blogs have earned a bad rap for being the let-it-all-hang-out meanderings of all and sundry, they are also serious money-makers for those who know how to use them.

A serial blogger can, for example, give a teaser in the main blog and sell memberships that allow readers access to the whole story, which may be behind a password. Another way to monetize a blog is to sell advertising. This is how the big political bloggers earn their cash.

The other way to turn a blog into cash is to print it out and sell it, either as a hard copy or an e-book.

If your blook is good, you could enter it into Lulu's Blooker Prize competition. For 2007, there are 3 categories: non-fiction, fiction, and comics. Submissons must be in by January 15, 2007.

No matter how you publish your work, you will want to be sure it's as good as you can make it.

Blooks are part of the move to turn digital words into print. Watch this space for information on the technology that will turn entire Web sites into books.

I'm not writing a blook, not yet, anyway. But I do have a blog that keeps writers up to date on news like this. If you'd like notification when I post a new item, sign up using the RSS feed on the left. Don't know what that is? Don't worry, it's all explained if you click the link.

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