I need to gather a list of books that were born out of websites. I know of several already: james lileks’ two books, the Nerve nudes, Fierce.com book…and after that my brain draws a blank. (Even though two days ago I had a list of 5! Age…)
I tried to Google, but it wasn’t giving me the information I was looking for with the permutations f the question I was coming up with.
So…can you tell me about any such books you are aware of, or a clever way to find out?
thanks!
“the Knot” is books… (goldmine!)
I don’t know how to find a list of them, but I can give you one title. The Book of Ratings by Lore Sjoberg came from The Brunching Shuttlecocks.
Oh, wait, I can give you a second title. Grudge Match by Brian Wright and Steve Levine came from www.grudge-match.com (which looks like it’s been taken down already).
Real Ultimate Power by Robert Hamburger book link , site link.
“1. Ninjas are mammals.
2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.”
www.museumofhoaxes.com spawned a book of the same title.
I believe that the writers at www.fametracker.com are planning to release a book based on their “Hey! It’s That Guy!” feature. (Their forums are now defunct, so I can’t find the original announcement concerning it.)
F’d Companies: Spectacular Dot-Com Flameouts came from the FuckedCompany.com website. I had a good time putting it on the birthday list I gave to my Mom – to her credit, she bought it for me.
The Real Ultimate Power website is priceless.
The Onion and Modern Humorist both have spawned books. So have Jump the Shark and Ain’t It Cool News.
http://www.sorryeverybody.com/ has a book (albeit a photo book) and Post Secret is working on a book (also a photo book).
WWWF Ultimate Grudge Match got turned into a book. Lore Sjoberg’s Book of Ratings was originally a feature on Brunching Shuttlecocks.
Um, all of the above were already mentioned by Kat, but dammit, I looked up all the URLs so I’m leaving them in there anyway. Also I will mention The Darwin Awards, which has been turned into a couple of books now, I think.
And this may not be exactly what you’re thinking of, but Bill Walsh took a bunch of the content from his copyediting site, The Slot, and turned it into a printed style guide. (Lapsing into a Comma)
Several Web comics have been turned into books. The Joy of Tech and Argon Zark come to mind.
I’ll add this one:
http://www.ironycentral.com/poobomb.html
I read it on the site before it was turned into a book. Freaking hilarious.
The Flylady wrote a book called Sink Reflections.
Jump the Shark by Jon Hein - Originally a website about when good TV series turn bad. Originated the catch-phrase.
Heroes & Monsters: The Unofficial Companion to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and A Blazing World: The Unofficial Companion to the Second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Jess Nevins - Started as an online board for discussing obscure references in comic book series (including LoEG). Eventually became an online set of annotations and then a book.
What If: Alternative Historical Time Lines by Robert Blumetti and American Indian Victories by Dale R. Cozort - Alternate history timelines that originally appeared online.
The Grantville Gazette by Eric Flint (ed) - Started as a novel 1632 written by Flint. The book became popular and prompted Flint to co-author several sequels and to start a website about the background of the book. Material from the website was then incorporated into this book.
Thought of two more:
From Porn to Poetry: Clean Sheets Celebrates the Erotic Mind by Susannah Indigo and Brian Peters (eds) and Literotica: the very best of Literotica.com by Lori Selke (ed) are collections of erotic stories that originally appeared on the Clean Sheets and Literotica websites.
Mothers Who Think (1999), edited by Camille Peri and Kate Moses. A book compiled from articles that had originally appeared online at salon.com. Salon used to have a section called Mothers who Think. This title is still used for a Salon Table Talk forum, but Salon dropped it some years ago.
Anyway, I remember reading Salon at work (back in 1999, at Dupont Circle) and then on my lunchbreak strolling into Kramerbooks and seeing this actual paper-and-print entity. It had length, breadth, depth, heft, and solidity. It seemed odd how the same articles I had known as electrons — and had read for free — and you still could read them online for free because they were archived — were now being sold in this very unelectronic form. The book itself did not seem quite physically real to me. Somehow I felt it didn’t belong on paper bound into a rectangular solid. Its nature was really electronic.
Belle de Jour - Confessions of a High Class Call Girl won a major blog award then became a book. I won’t post in case it breaches some arcane “thinkofthechildren!!1!1!1” type law, but you’ll easily find it on Google.
This is the Amazon book link.