The New York Times had an article yesterday on authors who use blogs as part of the writing process. Wired and Industry Standard magazine founder John Battelle is featured, as is his blog and upcoming book. Chris Anderson, also of Wired, and his Long Tail book and blog are also given recognition.
The main point of the article is how blogs change the often isolated, dementia-inducing process of writing a book (think Chevy Chase in this movie) into a much more collaborative, though probably no less addling ffort. Author Tania Ralli writes:
“Authors’ blogs also change the solitary mission of writing into something more closely resembling open-source software. Mistakes are corrected before they are eternalized in printed pages, and readers can take satisfaction that they contributed to a book’s creation… Despite the encouragement some authors receive from their online readers, the steady stream of feedback can be paralyzing. For some, the open process invites criticism and self-doubt when there is research to be done.”
Speaking of paralyzing, as of the writing of this post, the popular blog SearchEngineJournal.com has been hacked. Here’s hope you get things up and running soon, guys.
I visited a very interesting site, they have a vast collection of books which have been categories and are presented to viewers in an easy-to-search format. You should check it out.
http://www.khichdee.com/category-catid-11-paraid-0.htm