What do Look at this Fucking Hipster, Postcards from Yo Momma, Stuff White People Like, I Can Has Cheezburger, and Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle, have in common (you know, aside being online sensations)?
Book deals.
Many bloggers, especially those with humor-related sites, are scoring book deals from publishers who are hoping to turn page views into dollars thanks to people who want a clever, hip book to display on their coffee table or commode.
The book deal has become a badge of honor among popular websites, even The New York Times has pointed to the book deal as a reason for people to start blogging in the first place.
But does this make sense? Why would the vanguard of a new movement seek the approval of the gatekeepers of old media?
The Brooklyn Rail‘s Sarah Hromack asks “How strangely anachronistic is it (and yet, extraordinarily telling) that those who participate in perhaps the most monumental democratic exercise ever—and who do so daily, often for a living—would seek to tame the great, unbridled, immaterial beast that is the Internet with some high-gloss stock and two binding boards?”
Why is it that “In Print We Trust“?
