How We Assembled This Book
We thought you might be interested in how we
assembled this book.
The following FAQ should answer any questions you
may have. If not, drop us a
line.
How did you select the
best blog content for the book?
A small team of people (2) went from blog
to blog, reading thousands and thousands of entries. In fact, we estimate that
at least 30,000 blog entries were read in order to narrow the initial selection
down to about 170. Not all 170 entries selected could make the final cut due to
page count constraints, so we had to cut some entries.
How did you select the
entries that made it into the book?
After selecting the initial entries,
we assembled them into a special software application written for this project.
That content was then sent to a panel of three professional writers who were
given instructions to rate the content on how it made them feel. The rating
system was from 1-5, 5 being the highest. After the ratings were completed, we
averaged the scores, took the highest-rated content, and assembled it for the
book. We wanted to ensure that the content wasn’t selected by the whims
of one or two editors’ personal feelings, so we removed ourselves from
the process.
Who are the
advisors who rated the content?
Pam
Ribon: Pamela Ribon is the creator of the
hugely successful pamie.com and a writer for TelevisionWithoutPity.com. Her
debut novel, Why Girls are Weird, landed on Bay Area bestseller lists in its
first month. She has since optioned the film rights and is penning the script.
She created, directed, and performed in the cult hit Call Us Crazy: The Anne
Heche Monologues, which drew attention from several major publications,
including People magazine and The New York Post. Pamela has a BFA in acting from
the University of Texas at Austin. She currently lives in Los Angeles. She has
been known to wear
pigtails.
Jack
Boulware: Jack Boulware
(www.jackboulware.com) is originally from Montana, and he is the author of two
nonfiction social history books, Sex American Style and San Francisco Bizarro.
He has received a handful of journalism awards and writes regularly for a wide
variety of publications. Stories have taken him to Greenland, Mexico, UK,
France, Ukraine, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and throughout the lower 48 states. In a
previous life, he was founding editor of the satirical investigative Nose
magazine and a columnist for SF Weekly. He is co-founder and co-director of the
Bay Area’s annual Litquake literary festival and is currently working on
two new book projects.
Rick
Karr: Rick Karr reports on culture and
technology for National Public Radio News. He's also a musician, songwriter and
record producer. He's currently writing a book-length history of the technology
of popular music. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, artist and filmmaker
Birgit Rathsmann.
A few
bloggers in the book have multiple entries. Did they get special consideration?
No. All the bloggers we initially
selected had numerous entries up for consideration; however, the final cut of
the book is a representation of what the advisors rated as the best content. We
took almost everything that scored 3.5 or better. In fact, some content rated
high but we had to cut it for other reasons (we were unable to secure
permissions, etc.).
Why
didn’t you announce and ask for
submissions?
This isn’t a contest or awards
show, and we didn’t want this to be an audition. If we had asked for
submissions, everyone and their uncle would have sent links to content, and it
wouldn’t have been honest. We wanted content that was written without the
perspective that it was auditioning for a spot in a book. And from a management
standpoint, we would have been overwhelmed with possibly millions of
submissions.
In addition, anything
nominated by a public-submission standard tends to be skewed and is not
necessarily the best. For example, the blog of a famous writer is not
necessarily better than the blog of a virtual unknown, but because the famous
writer has a following, she/he gets more
attention.
Did any entries
score a perfect 5?
Yes, only one. I'll never tell (except
perhaps the author).
This
project sounds easy—was it?
It
was actually one of the hardest projects we have ever worked on. For one thing,
no one has ever collected, edited, or published a book quite like this one. It
seemed as though we were confronted by new issues every day. Also, finding the
content was, at times, mind numbingly boring. Reading between 100-200 entries a
day for months can be a real strain. Some entries were brilliant, but we had to
go through 20 or 30 entries to find it. Some blogs have great content but are
poorly designed. Some have a great design and are easy to navigate, but the
content is weaker. It was like finding a needle in an ever-expanding
haystack.
Did you change the
blog content at all?
We made some difficult editorial
decisions when it came to the content. The goal was simply to present this
content as literature. So we made the following changes:
-We didn’t want any noise at
the beginning of each entry like URL, site name, date, and so on. Each entry
starts with the title and author.
-We selected content that
didn’t rely on links to contribute to the content as a whole.
-We corrected spelling and
punctuation unless the errors were an integral part of the content.
-In these times of nipplegate and
all the ridiculous knee jerk censorship of Congress and the FCC, I ensured that
we preserved all the content with no censorship whatsoever. Free speech is free
speech, you can't pick and choose based on what you like or don't like. In fact,
we were advised by an attorney to put a parental warning on the cover. I said
no. The back cover of the book says it is provocative, and if you are offended
by what lies between the covers, then don't read it. As a parent, I personally
wouldn't give this book to anyone under 16. It contains some strong sexual
content.
Some of this
content isn’t really a blog. What’s up with that?
We used a loose definition of what is
and isn’t a blog. Although some people differentiate between what is a
blog, what is journaling, and so on, the masses have already adopted the term
“blog” to mean many different things. The line between what is and
isn’t a blog is now so fine that before too long, differentiating blog and
nonblog will be nearly impossible. We kept to sites we discovered within the
blogopshere and looked for individuals who were doing interesting or challenging
things with online content. We were looking for people who challenged the future
of literature. Each included entry went through intense scrutiny, and we tried
to ensure that each entry was true to the nature and feel of the book.
Will there be other
books?
We plan on doing a number of books from
the blogosphere, including recipes, travelblogs, love/sex/relationships, and
more. We also plan to do an anthology each year. For that to happen we need
your support, so please buy a copy of this book!!!
Will you take submissions
or nominations for those books?
No. We want to capture good content that
isn’t trying to make it into a book.
Posted: Sat
- March 20, 2004 at 09:58 AM
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