"Turn a blog into a book?" I asked myself. "Isn't that going in the opposite direction?"
For blogs seem to be almost an antithesis to the printed word. One rests in cyberspace, expanding in elastic time and space - while the other is encased in a limited number of physical pages between two covers.
I may not have seriously considered this request at all, hadn't it been for a remark made by a good friend a short time earlier:
"Your blog would make a good book," he said.
"A book... yes. But what's the point?" I asked myself.
The point, according to the publisher - bloggingbooks, is quite clear:
Blogs deserve being published!
Millions of people share their point of view with the world in real time – This is how blogs have
become part of our everyday lives. Blogs focus on the present and thereby provide continuous
commentary on daily happenings. Events and content, that are presented in a chronological
order on the internet, get a new dimension through books. Books create systematic snapshots
through collecting, compiling, categorizing and commenting.
Are you convinced?
I still wasn't, although they had definitely captured my interest. I think that what may have convinced me in the end was the revelation that a blog is like sand sifting through our fingers. We see it as it passes through, but then it is swallowed up in the collecting mound of sand below. Although one may jump back in time and sporadically read earlier postings, a blog is more like a newspaper than a book. It is archived like many newspapers are, but only a small percentage of people work their way back.
I know that I am subjective, but in transforming the blog structure into book form (a huge task in itself), I really enjoyed reading the postings from old to new. A blog can make a good book, strangely enough.
So Why I May Still Be Canadian is my second book - the one most people can understand. And this blog posting may be seen as a watershed separating the blog, which is the book, from the blog which still bravely carries onward into the virtual darkness.
If you do purchase my book, drop me a line and share your thoughts. Always good to know that you are not alone.
