Blog Books, and Souvenirs!

I still think it was a good idea, in fact I think it was an idea just a bit ahead of its time.  This book was an experiment really, a playful attempt to have a conversation with people we were interested in,  open it up to others, and use social media to create a tribe to help with the conversation, then publish it all up at the end of the road.

We began the project in 2005/06 and was eventually published in 07.  Blogs were becoming the thing, and the book is essentially a published form of the blog.  That was the big idea!  We convinced a publisher (Paternoster) to pay for the printing of a book, a book that any reader could read for free on the web.

To work at making the discourse rise above some of the unfocused shuffling that goes on in many blogs, we asked a handful of smart people, recognized "experts" as it were, to blog on an assigned topic like "what is postmodernism?" or, "what does a postmodern apologetic look like?" then we had the other "smart" people comment on the blog.  All very safe at this point, but what where we really stretched it out was by  inviting any reader (tribe member) on the web to offer their own comment to the questions being blogged about, with the promise that anyone  could find their own writing on the blog published in the final printed book!  Yes you too could be published with our assigned "smart people"!

So we sold it to the tribe by offering them the carrot that they too could be published with our hand selected "smart" people, simply by being a part of the conversation, being a good tribe member.

And low and behold, it worked!  A publisher printed a book that could be had for free, and tribe members bought the book that they participated in writing, and they bought it as a souvenir!  and souvenirs for their friends and family, because they were in it!

The reason I say the idea was a bit ahead of its time is because we now have best selling author and blogger Seth Godin telling his tribe members essentially the same thing.  People buy Seth's books, but virtually all of what is printed can be read for free on his blog, but they buy the book as a souvenir, a reward for being a good member of his tribe.

I remember telling the publisher that someday we would see many books published in this way, that this was the beginning of something altogether new, not sure all what, but new and different.  

I'm playing with writing another book on the imagination, the Bible and creativity made in a similar manner,  wanna play too?  I'll give you a souvenir when it's all done.