Blook

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A blook can refer to either an object manufactured to imitate a bound book, an online book published via a blog, or a printed book that contains or is based on content from a blog.

[edit] Imitation books

The term "blook" has been actively used since the 1990s, by librarian/collector, Mindell Dubansky, to describe unique or manufactured objects and ephemera that are made in imitation of a bound book or several bound books standing together. A blook is replica of a book and has no text. The term "blook" is a shortening of "looks like a book."

These items can be found as early as the 16th century and were made in many countries. They can take the form of memorial objects, advertising and packaging, toys and games, household appliances and others. For example the "bible regal" was a form of late-Medival portable organ that looked like a book.

[edit] Blogs as books

With the advent of the blog people started to publish books serialized on their blogs. Chapters are published one by one as blog posts, and readers can then subscribe to the blook via an RSS feed, tag it and comment on it. This type of blook was popularized by Tom Evslin in September 2005, with the launch of hackoff.com, a murder mystery set in the dot-com bubble.

The first blook was written by Tony Pierce in 2002 when he compiled selected posts from his one-year-old blog and turned the collection into a book called "Blook". The name came about when Pierce held a contest, asking his readers to suggest a title for the book. Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine won the contest and subsequently invented the term, as documented here. Pierce went on to publish two other blooks, How To Blog and Stiff.

If you take forums in to consideration as well, Maroc.NL would have written the first blook in the fall of 2001. The book can be found on here and here. The book "Maroc.nl: digitaal lief en leed van Marokkaanse jongeren" (translation: Maroc.nl: digital affections of Moroccan youth) describes the everyday questions of Moroccan youth living in the Netherlands as they were collected from the website's forums.

Print-on-demand publisher Lulu.com inaugurated the Lulu Blooker Prize for blooks, using the definition of a book deriving from blog content, which was first awarded in 2006. There are various ways for creating such books, including Blurb's BookSmart. Just as Web-based services like TypePad, Blogger, and LiveJournal lowered the barrier-to-access to online publishing, such tools lower the barrier to publishing books.

The printed blook phenomenon is not limited to self-publishing. As reported in this article in The Book Standard and elsewhere, several popular bloggers have signed book deals with major publishers to write books based on their blogs. It's not clear, however, whether a blog's popularity directly translates into high book sales.

The term blook is one of a short-list of new words being considered by a panel of experts for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary according to an article which appeared in the news blog of Guardian Unlimited in October of 2006 and is a runner-up for Word of the Year according to that article.