How we're promoting the 'Best Posts of the Year' project

The Best Posts of the Year compilation will be posted late today. If you find it worthwhile, you can help it happen again next year - while helping yourself. Meanwhile, there's news in this progress report.

• Our pitch to literary agents gains some traction.

We held back posting this year's Best Posts compilation because we decided to first pitch the concept to literary agents. We got a few thoughtful responses, and one potential green light from a well-established agency. We'll see how that plays out.

Let's emphasize that this is not the same as saying that the compilation is about to be publiished. Even if we come to terms with the agent, it does not guarantee the project a publisher. Nor does it mean that all the bloggers involved have yet agreed to participate. It simply means there is interest and that we are moving forward. We want to report our progress to all of you who have shown interest and supported this project so far.

A published book obviously is of benefit to the ongoing project. But published or not, we need your support to enable this project's success and continuation into next year. At this writing, we can only report that we are working toward a publication deal for the first installment. But there's no point holding off any longer, waiting to find out.

• We encountered many rejections.

The most commonly offered reason for passing on the project was: "Publishers (and readers) won't pay for content already available for free on the web". We strongly disagree. If this were true, then current blogpost-compilation books by Post Secret, Seth Godin and Overheard in New York (among others) were big miscalculations on the part of their publishers. We believe that that these publishers are showing foresight by tapping into a new source of literary creativity, at the front of the acceptance curve.

• The three main fallacies of the 'people won't pay' rationale:

1) The core assumption is that the book-reading audience and the blog-reading audience are one and the same. Not true! Some blog readers rarely read books, while many book readers rarely read blogs.

2) The primary value of this compilation is the research involved. Few people would ever find all these posts on their own. And if they did, most people would prefer to read this amount of material in books form rather than on a computer screen.

3) The unparallelled success and staying power of Readers' Digest demonstrates that there is a substantial audience for a 'guided tour' through the literary jungle. This goes double for the blogosphere, which is far bigger and wilder than the commercial printed media ever managed. Readers don't have time to assess the best of millions of choices on their own. They want help from someone who knows the lay of the land.

• What the agents really meant when they passed:

"I've never handled anything like this, and I don't know what to make of it." (Which is understandable. Books like this are unfamiliar territory.)

• What agents and publishers will say when someone picks up and runs with the idea:

"I'd be interested in something like it, but they have that market all sown up."

• What agents and publishers will say if it becomes as successful as the 'For Dummies' franchise:

"You know anyone who can crank out a knockoff?" (Although we do not expect success on the scale of the 'Dummies' franchise!)

• What agents and publishers don't yet grasp about the "Best Posts" compilation:

Because the bloggers involved care about it, they will help promote the idea to their readers. Very few books can reach the grassroots reader the way this compilation can. We cannot recall a previous publication in which every contributor had both the interest and ability to contribute to the marketing effort so vital to a publication's success.

• Why an accompanying annual printed publication is needed:

Publishing this book creates a focus for resources and interest that is vital to this project's long-term goals. The book also enables an outreach beyond the blogosphere, into a braoder readership. Blog posts, at their best, are "outsider literature" which deserves a place alongside traditional "commercial" literature.

Finding these posts required a substantial effort. This collection cannot be found by a simple Google search. Most of these posts would not be found on the blogs winning the various "Best Weblog" competitions, which are (mostly) in reality traffic-driving contests. In order to contnue finding such posts, and to find more and better ones in the future, this effort must be sustained.

• How you can help this project, and yourself:

When the "Best of" post goes up, it will include options through which bloggers can "sponsor" the effort, driving traffic to a central information location. In return, "sponsors" receive a share of the traffic that this project will generate going forward. We will take out periodic blogads for this project, and should the publication effort bear fruit it will generate publicity for the project. This likewise will build project-specific site traffic which will trickle down to sponsors.

This will be explained in detail once the post is up. Meanwhile, if you have no yet done so, you might consider placing one of the banners/buttons below in a post or sidebar. For those who have this banner in their sidebar already, the URL of the completed post has not changed. You're all set.

Thank you all for your interest and support. We are moving ahead. Copy and paste any of the codes below into a post or sidebar to help us announce this project.


Code for 300 x 61, animated/large:

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Code for 240 x 49, animated/medium:

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Code for 150 x 31, animated/small:

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Code for 300 x 61, static/large:

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Code for 240 x 49, static/medium:

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Code for 150 x 31, static/small:

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Code for 80 x 14, static/nano:

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