How About Letting Readers' Input Write Your Book?
December 18, 2010
An idea for lazy writers (although not new, damn it!): get your readers' feedback on an interesting subject and then formulate that input into a finished book and sell it on the internet!Cool idea...and that's just what Andrew Sullivan, writer of the 10-year-old Daily Dish blog on the Atlantic web site, has done successfully for the second time...Hell, I have to admit it, I admire pure genius.
He first published a book on the Blurb.com "Make Your Own Book" site back in June, made up of photos sent in under "The View from Your Window" feature of his Daily Dish blog and sold it for $33.95. He recently published a second book, The Cannabis Closet, made up of reader content solicited from readers who had experience smoking pot. To date he has sold approximately 1000 copies at a print-on-demand paperback price of $5.95.
Now, if only I could generate The Daily Dish’s 1.3 million unique monthly visitors!!!!
Anyway, this report is from Bridget Kinsella of Publishers Weekly:
For the second time, author, editor, and blogger Andrew Sullivan has taken reader content on his 10-year-old Daily Dish blog on the Atlantic Web site and created a crowd-sourced printed book published by Blurb and sold through its online bookstore. Last Friday Sullivan blogged about how the book, The Cannabis Closet, grew out of an extensive e-mail of Daily Dish readers writing candidly about their pot use. By early this week, Blurb had sold 1,000 copies of the print-on-demand paperback priced at $5.95.
In June, Sullivan and his four-person staff of the Daily Dish compiled photographs posted on its “The View from Your Window” feature on the blog into a full-color, $33.95 book with the same title with Blurb.
Sullivan called The Cannabis Closet’s unorthodox publishing route as the book equivalent of doing a “triple lutz” in ice-skating. “In as much as we could start with an e-mail thread that came through a blog, then turn it around in midair and make it into a book,” he explained. Sullivan provided the foreword for the book, Daily Dish executive editor Chris Bodenner edited the readers’ postings on marijuana use and Chip Kidd designed the cover.
Read and learn more
Posted by John R.. Posted In : self-publishing
The answer to this post's title is: maybe so. I never really thought about a compilation of data being copyrightable until I came across an article about an Australian court case 
Is the print mag publishing market finding it's bottom...or optimum level of sustainability? Seems it might be as there were fewer closures this year than last. There were also fewer start-ups than last year, but there were start-ups! 
The newly opened Google eBookstore has some nice surprises and offerings. The Google Store can sell books to targeted people right after they search a particular topic AND they can also create an ad-supported publishing model...delivering targeted ads from the book subject purchases...Seems this is more possible since the ebooks will be provided from the cloud configuration.
Both these booksellers have struggled to adapt and keep pace with new digital tech, discounters and online competitors...But, if I had to guess which one would buy the other in a takeover bid, I would have guessed B&N would be the pursuer and not the other way around.
First this:
A venerable old weekly print news mag (it was reduced to monthly in November 2008) is riding off into it's last sunset (the last issue is this month)...
A little visionary post tonight...As much as I can envision the future anyway (being retarded makes it difficult). 
With the advent of mobile devices such as the iPad and iPhone, newspapers and magazines see a hitherto nonexistent opportunity for generating paid subscription digital versions as the new mobiles (and they WILL be proliferating like rabbits!) will be hungry for great, meaningful and pertinent content.
Writer, Old-Warrior-Adventurer, Blogger... I was born in Key West, Florida. A rather famous hangout for some past famous writers: Hemingway and Tennessee Williams to name two. I just hope that I possess a glimmer of their talent. I have a bachelors degree in architecture/construction and a master's degree in industrial engineering. I have been writing for fifty plus years. Most of my writing has been in the technical, instructional and business areas. I am working on my first book: "Havana Harvest---When Cuba Was Naughty" which details my coming of age experiences in 1958 Havana, Cuba, at the age of 15. Please visit my other blog "Writers Welcome Blog" at http://alturl.com/4z88.