The New York Observer’s MondoWeiss: How the Internet Is Replacing the Book

Self-publishing on the web, whether through blogs or by posting articles in web-journals, is rapidly eclipsing traditional academic venues in its ability to serve the public and popularize knowledge. For example, I have an impact on policy making in Washington and capitals across the globe through my blog, which has close to 2,000
readers a day. Many of my readers are from a blue-chip list of policy wonks who have email tags from the leading think tanks and government agencies. Moreover scores of journalists are reading my site every day. I speak to at least 10 journalists a week, who use me and my site for story ideas, background information, and contacts. I was quoted in over 1,000 articles last year while living in Damascus. If my relatively modest, country-specific site is having an impact, Juan Cole’s is many times larger. He was getting a quarter million readers a month at the height of the Iraq war. Web-publishing and blogging is reconnecting academics to main-stream intellectual discourse.

I’ve often marvelled at the niche the Da Vinci Code is pitched at.
(and this post is worth gold to a budding author!)
(or exactly how we wrote our book)

Having read several books on the subject before the Da Vinci Code I was really interested.
The books I read were fairly heavy on the subjecyt and often the author was pushing a particulay band wagon.
- Jesus’s body is buried in France
- The bloodline still exists
- The cult Jesus belonged to
- What did the Catholic Church really know and what was covered uo.

Eoin Purcell’s blog post ….

Eoin Purcell’s Blog » Blog Archive » Its all about marketing

puts a lot of this in to a good context.

The niche that Dan Brown took was writing something that put many non-fiction books in to a context and language that many people could understand. Of course many serious scholars had covered this niche, and lots of non-fiction writers but there are millions of people that dont need all the cross references and lengthy support of circumstantial co-incedences.

The message is just as Eoin says …

“You can have a book that to the elite appears predictable
and clunky but raises the pulse of the majority of readers.”

“if you cannot create a reason for a book to be bought then
there will be no sales.”

Dan Brown put in to context for me a lot of the books I had read thqat now sit on my book shelf probably never to be read again because they are all a small part in the puzzle.

As a result of Dan Brown I also uncovered a niche ….
and published an eBook together with a scholar.

We set up a web page that people reached via a google advertisment like the following …

On this page we had a question like ….

What is the one major question you had after reading the DaVinci code?

People could enter their question and boy did they do that …

… thousands of them

Look at the stats …

The advertisment appeared on 1,684,102 pages.
People reached these pages after seqarching for things like “opus dei” “priory of sion” “mary magdalene” etc

Once they reached the pages our advertisment was on 33,644 of them CLICKED on our advertisment and went to the questionaire page.
… and hundreds of them asked questions.
Questions like ….

• What Is The Da Vinci Code?
• What Is The Holy Grail?
• Where Is The Holy Grail?
• What Is The Quest Of The Grail?
• What Is The Grail Code?
• What Are The Dead Sea Scrolls?
• What Are The Nag Hammadi Codices?
• How Many Gospels Were There?
• Does The Gospel Of Mary Magdalene Really Exist?
• Why Are There So Many Marys In The Bible?
• Who Was Mary, The Mother Of Jesus?
• Who Was The Real Mary Magdalene?
• What Is The Chalice Of Mary Magdalene?
• Were Jesus And Mary Magdalene Married?
• Where Is Mary Magdalene Buried?
• If Jesus Were Indeed Married To Mary Magdalene, Does His Bloodline Still Exist?
• Who Were The Merovingian Kings?
• Leonardo Da Vinci And The Last Supper
• Who Were The Knights Templar?
• Do The Legends About The Knights Templar Have Any Basis In Fact?
• What Was The Role Of The Freemasons?
• Does The Priory Of Sion Really Exist?
• What Is The Opus Dei?
• What Is A “Cilice”?
• What Is Hieros Gamos?
• What Is The Role Of The Rosslyn Chapel In The Grail Story?
• What Is The Fibonacci Series?
• Would You Say The Da Vinci Code Is Overtly Feminist?
• Did The Church Evolve From Pagan Religions?
• When Will The Church Admit The Truth?

So once we received these questions we wrote the book …

The DaVinci Answers “Facts Behind the Fiction”

So … following on from Eoin’s statement …
“if you cannot create a reason for a book to be bought then
there will be no sales.”

We had the questions people wanted answering and went out and wrote them.

That is how we wrote the book!

We sold thousands of books as a result.
This was long before the Da Vinci hysteria and the film.

If any budding authors want to receive the full blow by blow of how we got 1,683,102 adverts for our soon to be written book in front of people, extracted hundreds of questions and sold thousands of copies then leave a comment on this blog entry and I’ll get back to you.

This will work for any niche that people need questions answered.

All will be revealed!

What a paradigm shift!
We are all becoming authors.
With every blog post, with every photo stream, with podcasts.
“Many elements of society have come together at this time to make self publishing possible. Most people have home computers to write their books on, the industry has created high-speed digital printers and the Internet means all of these things can communicate”

Massive Book Publishing Growth Predicted

“Blooks”
– books based on blogs or Web sites — are a growth market for Lulu.
On a recent list of the company’s 100 top-selling books, 20 were based
on content first produced for the Web.

Lulu played up its affinity with bloggers earlier this
year by sponsoring the Blooker Prize, the first literary prize for
blooks. It won Lulu tons of free publicity and played up the company’s
natural affinity with bloggers. “Blogging is self-publishing,” Fraser
said.

Blooks come of age with Lulu Blooker Prize

Lulu announces the Short-List for the Lulu Blooker Prize, the world’s first literary prize devoted to “blooks”: books based on blogs or websites.“Blooks are the latest landmark in the history of books,” says Bob Young, CEO of Lulu.

Loretta Dillon, crime buff, essayist, and musician from Cleveland, Ohio, was named to the non-fiction short-list for the Lulu Blooker Prize, the world’s first literary prize devoted to books based on blogs or websites.

Winners of the Lulu Blooker Prize (www.lulublookerprize.com) will be announced on Monday, April 3, 2006. There will be $1,000 USD awarded to the winner in each of the three categories, with an extra $1,000 USD going to one of those three who has been deemed by the judges to be the best overall. The judges are Cory Doctorow (www.craphound.com), Robin Miller (www.roblimo.com), and Paul Jones (www.ibiblio.com

Dillon’s book, “Stone Cold Guilty – The People v. Scott Lee Peterson” (http://www.lulu.com/content/130762) is one of six books on the non-fiction shortlist. It is based on her blog “Observations of a Misfit” (www.misfitting.com).

Dillon, a full-time office manager in suburban West Cleveland, writes on her own time, in her family’s living room and is an admitted true-crime buff.

“I began to blog about the Peterson case early on, when it first hit the news, but I was the only blogger covering it,” said Dillon. “As a result, I received a number of readers who sent me information about the case and heard from anonymous sources, along with a regular comment section forum that included a few dozen regular participants and hundreds of occasional posters. Eventually, I drew a regular readership of a few thousand people. I made arrangements to attend the trial twice. After around 900 blog entries, including a bunch of song parodies and spoofs, I compiled the most important ones into a book, or rather, a blook.”

Reviews of Dillon’s book at Lulu.com rave over her book. Stated Jay B. Gaskill, former Alameda County Public Defender from 1989-1999,
“Loretta Dillon’s Peterson book is stone cold proof, if any is still needed, that the blogosphere contains some of the very best writing, analysis and commentary anywhere.”

The prize is sponsored by Lulu (www.lulu.com), a self-publishing website that lets anyone publish their own book or blook at no up-front charge. “Blooks are the latest landmark in the history of books,” said Bob Young, CEO of Lulu.

“Other blooks to make the short-list include “Julie and Julia,” Julie Powell’s chronicle of “extreme cooking” in a New York apartment kitchen; “Belle du Jour,” based on the blog of a London call-girl; and “Egg Bacon Chips and Beans: 50 Great Cafes and the Stuff That Makes Them Great,” a literary tribute to greasy spoon diners.

A total of 89 blooks were submitted by “blauthors” (i.e. blook authors) from over a dozen countries, including the UK, Canada, India, Australia, Mexico, France, Spain and the Netherlands.

About the Lulu Blooker prize (www.lulublookerprize.com): The Lulu Blooker Prize is the brainchild of the folks at Lulu.com (www.lulu.com), the world’s fastest-growing provider of self-publishing technology and services — and the simplest place to turn web content into a blook. They want to raise the visibility of the growing number of talented writers who are using blogs and websites to develop quality content. (The prize’s name is also intended as an affectionate nod to another important literary prize.)