Book-as-Blog: Encouraging Reading by Posting a Chapter at a Time
I realized I haven’t picked up a book in weeks, (non-academic book, that is), but I’ve read more than my fair share of blogs in that same time. I wonder if part of the reason is the longer time commitment required by a book. This prevents it from being read quickly and keeps it forever on my wish list. If so, then how about a service that breaks down books into blog-post-sized chunks and publishes them every few days?
The idea is inspired by, — nay, stolen from — Kevin Kelly, who is reissuing his 10-yr old book as a blog (hat-tip to Seth Godin’s post on the topic). His reasons are different, though. The book is out-of-print, and is already available as a downloadable PDF from his web site. Making it available as a blog is just another way of spreading his ideas wider, which is a great idea.
But apart from that, I like the idea of chopping up a book into chapter-sized chunks and making them available to readers one at a time. Not for any economic reasons, but because attentional resources are so scarce these days. A few times during the day, I have some free time which I use to read a few blog posts. If I ever thought about picking up a book during these breaks, I wouldn’t do it, simply because of the (arguably artificial) time commitment issues it raises in my mind. But talk about a chapter-sized, or even smaller blog post, and I’d read it.
Of course, not all book content has an affordance for this kind of splicing and dicing. If it takes several minutes for a reader to re-establish context from the last blog post, the purpose is lost. Some authors would consider their books a work of art too precious(ssss) to split it up into anything smaller. That’s also the reason why bands are often reluctant to sell singles instead of entire albums (apart from the record labels preferring to sell you 9 lame tracks bundled with 1 great track for $10 instead of $1, thank you very much.) But several non-fiction books could verily adapt to such a format.
The book-as-blog need not be free (as in no charge.) Sure, charge me for it. Implementation would be easy, charge me a micropayment and give me a secret watermarked feed URL. With so much new content licensed under a Creative Commons attribution license, it’s also possible to develop a web service that does this for liberally-licensed and public domain works. This is compatible with Creative Commons Attribution (BY), Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA), Attribution-Noncommercial (BY-NC), and Attribution Non-commercial Share-Alike (BY-NC-SA) licenses (but I’m not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, blah blah.)
Maybe something like this will finally get me back to the several-books-a-month club I used to be a member of, until I discovered this newfangled shiny thing called the Internet.
Manas, this is an interesting discussion point. Sure, as a business idea this may work, considering the number of people who read online. Then it seems that the goal in reading a book is just to access its contents. For me, the beauty of a book is that it takes me away from being online and from the computer, among other things. I love to flip pages of a real book, unraveling and reflecting on the world created by the author (even in non-fiction books). I can take it along wherever I go, read it lying down on the bed/sofa, enjoy it on a park bench with coffee and cake, enjoy the different shapes and sizes that it comes in, and (very important for me) be able to choose whether to read a bit or the entire thing. Agreed that you can all this with a computer but the experience is just not comparable (to me).
Also to think about are the implications this will have on authors. Will they write the book as they reveal it, blog entry by blog entry, (possibly) acting upon comments by readers (this does happen in different versions of a book, but that time frame is much slower, allowing the reader and writer to reflect upon what they have read more deliberately). It almost reminds me of a show with episodes being revealed one by one (not that there is something wrong with it but the purpose is different).
I have had access to electronic versions of books several times, but almost always I have got the book, if I really wanted to read it. Call me old-fashioned but I think some things are left as-is to be enjoyed most.
Just my $$!!
Uma — December 17, 2008
Excellent post. Very fitting indeed. I like the idea a lot, as it seems to be the only way to get us online junkies back to the book readers’ club.
Pradnya — December 22, 2008
Blog book: the Opposite of Book-As-a-Blog
It's been there for a while, but thought of it in relation to your post, when I read this – http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/idINIndia…. See question “What is your opinion on blog books?
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Uma — January 6, 2009
[...] has an excellent post about “Book-as-Blog“, where he makes the case for splitting books into chapters or even smaller units, and [...]
Pradnya Provokes » On Reading Books v/s Reading Blogs — September 19, 2009
I love this post. I am a big ole bookworm, but I haven’t alawys been one. I had trouble learning to read, when finally a teacher took extra time to help me learn. My Mom likes to say that I struggled a lot to read at first but once I learned they could never get me to stop. The Teacher that took that extra time to help me is still my absolute favorite and at 25 I still like to pop in and say hello. He is the Superintendent of our district these days.
Martins — August 21, 2012