The current issue of Business Week had a big article on the phenomenon of blooks, and it includes a slide show highlighting all three Blooker winners and other high-profile blooks. To be honest, we're pretty ticked off that it mischaracterizes Lulu.com as a vanity publisher and down-plays the significance of the Blooker Prize. However, it does spot-light what we've known all along, blooks are not a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon. In addition to the Blooker winners, non-fiction short-lister All the President's Spin gets a mention, as wall as entrant Warren Meyer and his blook Coyote Blog: Year One (available at Lulu).
Other blooks mentioned in the article/slide-show:
My War: Killing Time in Iraq by Colby Buzzell
Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq by Riverbend - nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize!
PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives by Frank Warren
Straight Up & Dirty by Stephanie Klein
None of these books were entered in the 2006 Blooker Prize, but there's always next year!
Speaking of blooks that were not considered for the Blooker, I wanted to mention Katrina and the Lost City of New Orleans by Rod Amis. Contest judge Robin Miller was one of the original editors of the blook, and for that reason, we had to disqualify it for entry. We did not have an official "honorable mention" list this year, but if we had, Rod's book would have been at the top.
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