In my opinion, blogging and book writing go hand-in-hand. All it takes to bridge the gap from blog to book is a bit more forethought, discipline, and structure, and of course a publisher, and BOOM! you’ve got a book. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that. My experience co-authoring a book (The Art of SEO) was nothing like that. But still, it’s nice to romanticize the process — simply assemble your blog posts into a cohesive structure and send it off to a publisher. What could be simpler?

More often than not the author’s blog is an afterthought. The book came first. Then the blog came second as the book’s marketing vehicle, a complement/supplement. I’m not knocking it, but it’s great to see a high-quality blog turn into a high-quality book.

As both an author and a blogger, I can really appreciate when a blogger succeeds in transforming their blog into a book. It’s inspiring. One of my favorites is PostSecret, which was turned into a whole series of books. More prototypical examples of blog-to-book projects are The Long Tail (blog / book) and The Search (blog / book). Both are excellent blogs, and excellent books. Sometimes Twitter feeds turn into books too, like S*it My Dad Says. That’s some funny stuff. Now it looks like CEO blogger Steve Spangler is coming out with a book too. His is called Naked Eggs and Flying Potatoes. A curious title. In actuality I think his book is more of an amalgamation of his video content than his blog posts, but nonetheless the finished book looks impressive. Congrats Steve!

Folks often ask me if I’m going to write another book. My answer: I doubt it. It’s too painful (like birthing a baby, though, as a man, I can’t truly appreciate the pain of childbirth), and it pays less than minimum wage if you work out the numbers. Folks will then chime in with “Yeah, and why bother with a physical book anyways when everybody’s migrating online!” That I don’t agree with. There are a very large group of holdouts — me included — who still prefer the feel of printed books, who enjoy the experience of curling up with a good book rather than a laptop or ebook reader. And yes I own an iPad, but I don’t read books on it. And I don’t plan to anytime soon. Call me a Luddite.

End of the afternoon and, surprisingly, the audience at the Blog Business Summit is beginning to perk up and ask more questions.Someone asks Robert Scoble: “So how much time does blogging take?” He laughs. His one-word answer: “Starbucks.” Expanded: “I spend almost every waking hour doing something related to blogging.”

The “time” question is key and of huge concern to prospective corporate bloggers.

Great tidbit just now from Boeing Web designer Chris Brownrigg on why Boeing’s much talked about blog is called Randy’s Journal: “Because they (management) were uncomfortable with the term blog.” Chris wisely got around that decision by giving the blog the following page title: “Boeing Blog: Randy’s Journal.” Better for search results when you type in “Boeing blog.” Take a look when you click through.

The (dreaded… or anticipated) blogging phone call

Chris was given 48 hours to design and launch the blog for Boeing VP Randy Baseler after getting “the blogging phone call.” Audience members nodded at this. Seems both managers and techies are getting “the call” from top management to “get into this blog thing.” Uninitiated into the ways of the blogosphere, he dove into the project by looking at the code behind lots of other blogs. He settled on Movable Type as the software platform. Posted a mock-up of the proposed blog here. Comments and other blog features were subsequently added after readers protested.

I love this inside glimpse of how a corporate blog gets launched… shows how it’s very much a joint effort between management and the Web techies.

Bob Wyman, CTO of PubSub, is trying to explain to the audience what the point is of blog search tools like PubSub, BlogPulse and Technorati. I like the way he puts it: “For the first time you have an open, trackable conversation.” In other words the babble of the blogosphere can be analyzed. If you (a company) listen carefully, you will learn what people are talking about, what they’re interested in and what they want to hear about. And then YOU will know what to write about, rather than issuing a press release once a month because you think you should.

Interesting… but I fear there’s too much inside baseball talk this morning. If I were an attendee just getting on the blogging boat, I’d be a bit lost already. Hope the panels coming up are more mindful of those who don’t consume Jeff Jarvis with their morning coffee.

Gen. James Cartwright

Defense Industry Daily, a relatively new industry blog from Watershed Publishing (publishers of MarketingVox), reports that four-star general James Cartwright, the top guy in charge of the U.S.’s nuclear arms infrastructure, is now blogging. It is literally required reading in his reporting command.

While the blog is supposed to be secure on a need-to-know basis, Defense Industry Daily indicates it’s actually read the thing. (Yipes.)

Communication consultant Debbie Weil dings the executive bloggers at Boeing and GM for neglecting to comment on recent big negative news about their companies (CEO resigning in sex scandal and major drop in earnings forecast respectively).

She’s got a good point. It’s also probably the kind of scenario that freaks out most companies about blogging. But, as she points out, if you’ve got it, you might as well flaunt it (i.e., you’ve earned positive credibility with an audience of readers through these blogs, so you may was well use the channel to advance a positive interpretation of such bad news rather than ignore the elephant in the room).

Debbie Weil: GM & Boeing: Corporate “Tell-It-Not” Blogs

Big geek, little geek:
Gizmodo editor Joel Johnson with
Bill ‘G-money’ Gates

Another sign of the times and validation for how seriously some businesses take blogs. Major score for Gawker Media’s Gizmodo: Microsoft approached them about an interview with G-Money himself, Bill Gates.  Much of the conversation in this first-installment of the serialized interview is about blogs and RSS. Big congrats to my man Joel Johnson, Gizmodo’s editor. (I bet Pete Rojas is just sick over this!)

Gizmodo: Bill Gates Interview

More newly noticed big-shot blogs:

• Tom Peters
• Laura Ries
• Eliot Spitzer

Garrison Keillor

For better or worse, I’m a major National Public Radio nerd, to the extent that most Saturday evenings you can find me (if you’re a stalker) at home listening to A Prairie Home Companion, the folksie, olde-timey radio show hosted by the inimitable national treasure Garrison Keillor. What can I say — although I grew up in New Jersey (God’s country), my folks are originally from Minnesota, so it’s my long-time ritual way of keeping in touch with my ancestral homeland.

On the subway ride to work today, I was browsing my new PHC catalog (the print edition), and because multi-channel marketing really does work, I called up the catalog and show’s web site, where I discovered Keillor’s “blog.” Granted, on the blog homepage itself, it calls itself a “travel diary,” but on the Stuff page, the link that caught my eye says “GK’s Travel Blog.” True, it hasn’t been updated since March, but judging by the archives, he did update it frequently in spurts; maybe he just hasn’t been on the road much since then. Worth keeping an eye on.

The site also blog-like musings from Russ Ringsak the show’s “resident writer and truck driver.”

Link

Gerrit Zalm

The Dutch Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Gerrit Zalm blogs. Needless to say, it’s in Dutch.

via Nevon

Link

Weird photo that
Steve Jurvetson
uses on his blog

A few weeks ago, I wrote that high-profile venture capitalist Tim Draper was blogging. Looking back at that site, I’m not sure it’s really a blog at all. He’s an author on Always-On, and it’s really hard to call things on that site blogs, as their system is kind of retarded.

Regardless, his colleague Steve Jurvetson, of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is now blogging, and there’s no doubt it’s a real blog: it’s hosted on Blogspot, after all.

Link

Arianna Huffington

Syndicated political columnist Arianna Huffington has been blogging for some months (unfortunately, because she uses the terrible calendar metaphor for the blog’s archives, it’s not easy to tell just how long she has been at it, but it looks like less than a year).

Link

Tim Draper

Big-shot venture capitalist Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson has a blog (of sorts) at Always-On. (Free registration required.)

Link

Jonathan Schwartz

Jonathan Schwartz was appointed president and CEO [make that COO; d'ho!] of Sun Microsystems just this past April, and by June the 38-year-old, ponytailed executive started a blog.

Bill Gates, take note.

Link

Lefty documentary maker, director most recently of the super popular and controversial Fahrenheit 9/11, now blogs. His first entry was made, ironically enough, on July 4.

Link

It was just a matter of time. A month ago, Microsoft founder and richest man in the world Bill Gates raved about blogs in a speech to business leaders. Now, the Seattle Times is suggesting Bill may launch his own blog imminently.

Seattle Times: Bill Gates Could Join the Ranks of Bloggers

Amusing, Onion-style look at some blogs by second- and third-rate celebrities, including Gillian Anderson, Melanie Griffith and Al Roker.

Other celeblogs not noted in the article include Bill Maher, Dave Barry (one of the few who actually keeps at it and is often worth reading), Jeff Bridges (weird, hand-written motif), Margaret Cho, Moby, Noam Chomsky and RuPaul (nearly three years now; you go, girl!).

UPDATE:
Classic indie pop band Jane’s Addiction now blog.

The Onion: Hollyblog: A Helpful Guide to Celebrity Weblogs