Is there a market for blookworms? One day after the BusinessWeek news analysis of blooks, CNET has published an article on the blog debate the article has sparked off.

"These so called 75,000 new online diaries are not, by any stretch of the imagination mostly diaries. They are everything from diaries, to marketing channels, to sales channels, to small business models, to PR venues and more…Now, this extremely ridiculous label called ‘blook’ is trying to stick to the blogosphere (another outdated name) and keep the whole concept of mass communication via this platform in the realm of ‘tiddly-winks, thing-a-mabobs and watch-ya-macall-its’. Listen, not every new idea or process that results from this platform needs to start with ‘bl’. I don’t have a solution to this naming convention catastrophe, but, I do know that it’s not pretty." 

Huh. There’s a new way of getting published, and this blogger cries out at the naming convention. Pity indeed. He completely missed the point - the renewed interest in blooks. Perhaps its a breath of fresh air to support the traditional publishing agency. Perhaps its just a passing fad. Either way its a poor comment CNET added to their article, even if they’re trying to show the critics of the movement - but then i can think of so many other logical reasons as to why the blooking phenomenon can fail.

However, another blogger, Louise Marley, had a very good point.

"Am I being a dinosaur for feeling that this will mean even more stratification? 75,000 new online journals every day implies, to me, the old needle-in-a-haystack dilemma: many are called (or at least are hopeful) but damned few will be found. There are a few fascinating jewels that have come out of blogs, of course–though they seem mostly to deal with war and sex. Is there a market? Would the rest of you go in search of a blook?" 

Interesting question. Why do blooks exist in the first place? Why use blogs? If you take a look at Epiguide, you’ll find a slew of well established (some above 100 chapters) webisodes that run on normal websites.

Blogs give a few distinct advantages over the normal online novel. Let’s have a look at them:

Blogs do not require you to mess with html code everytime you want to update. You just have to create a new post in a Microsoft-Word-like environment. It saves time and prevents you from screaming once your table tags go haywire.

Billed as the future DNA of web, RSS is a very powerful tool to use when distributing your blook. Blogs automatically create RSS feeds as you update, and instead of visiting your blog (and thousands of others), readers just subscribe and have the feed delivered to their feed reader of choice. With feature rich services like Feedburner, you can even compile these feeds into an email subscription service - all the more to have chapters delivered to your readers’ doorsteps!

Writing in a blog automatically makes you part of the blogsophere - a lively, noisy (if you listen to podcasts, that is) ethos of opinionated people. This bodes well for your blook, as blogs trade links and connect to each other fairly fast. Hop over to Technorati to take a peek at all this action

If you’re stuck building a website, there aren’t many places you can go to for advice. But blogging platforms have the benefit of collaborative users. If you have a layout problem with your blog (common when you’re trying to build a site for multiple browsers), just paste your code and have other users help you out. The Blogger forums are great for those dealing with the Blogger platform, while Wordpress users have their support forums. 

Blogging is all about conversation. Trackbacks provide a way for you to link to a post you’ve read somewhere, thus helping you to both foster ties with other bloggers as well as driving new traffic to your blog. That’s the rough idea - for more info check out Movable Type’s explanation. 

Core to the blogging experience is the fact that readers can comment easily on what you write. Fanmail is a thing of the past, and stories could very well be affected by what your readers expect and say on your plot. Draw a line here, however. Writers should determine how the story plays out, not the readers.

Last, but not least, blogs provide an easy way for aspiring authors to present their work ina pleasing format. Websites require some work before they look good - blogs have ready-made, one-click templates. I admit things get a little more complex with some of the better blogging platforms (AJAX, anyone?) but overall blogs are a lot more accessible to the guy who knows how to write better than he codes.

It seems the world is waking up to the publishing posibilities of blooks. Businessweek Online ran an article on blooks yesterday, with a pretty spot-on summary of this greatly growing world of writing.

Colby Buzzell, 28, didn’t expect to end up writing a book. In 2004, he was on a yearlong tour of duty as a machine gunner in Iraq. The skateboarder and hard-rock fan from San Francisco would make a daily dash into the Army tent that housed an Internet café to share snippets of his life: listening to Metallica on his iPod, fellow soldiers surfing the Net for porn, the stress of the latest mission. After eight weeks, Buzzell’s online diary was discovered by his military superiors and the blogging endeavor came to an abrupt end. By then it was too late. Media outlets were quoting from the blog, and offers from publishers were trickling in. 

Take a loong look at the web 2.0 products around you. In a world of media, we have Flickr for photos, Youtube for videos, Pandora and Last.fm for music. We have blogs to replace factual guides. The modern day Ripley’s Believe It Or Not is Boing Boing.

What about fiction?

You bet there’s a Flickr for fiction? Fictionpress, you say?

 Hah. You wish.

No. Fiction is not on the same scale as pictures or music or video. But we want more people to read, to write, to enjoy created worlds of magic, love and political strife.

I created Novelr to do exactly that. To review blooks of every kind and to help average Joes (like me) put up their stories on the web.

Novelr. Making people read.