Blog
March 8th 2010
Website hardcopy
A friend of mine received a book for her birthday this year, and it immediately had half the party laughing as hard as they could, crowded around the coffee table, reading excerpts to each other.
The book was Wanted: Bear Cubs for my Children - One Hundred of the Weirdest Posts Ever Seen on Craigslist (and Their Responses) and it had me sold immediately.
That is, until it was my turn to read, and I accidentally read the front cover first (I’m bad for that).
Turns out the book was relying on a false premise to entertain. Rather than being a collection of actual posts by real weirdos, each entry was written by one man, Gary Fingercastle. I stopped laughing; turns out the deck was stacked. I really hoped they were real, but the fabrication was epic.
It reminded me of when I saw The Blair Witch Project and thought it was the scariest thing ever. Right up to the moment I saw the credits report it was a work of fiction. I had invested a lot of emotion into that movie and it turned around and slapped me. Serves me right for being uniformed? Maybe. The memory still stings though, as does the one with Wanted: Bear Cubs.
I vowed never to trust another book based off a website.
Ever been to www.thisiswhyyourefat.com? The infamous stomach-exploding website has a book for you to buy. It was written by random people.
Well, not “written” so much as “submitted.”
The opposite of the Craigslist book, where I was hoping for a slew of authors, the TIWYF book is entirely composed of random people’s entries to the website. No originality from the authors required further than marketing skills.
Thanks, but I can get the same effect by hitting “print.”
Now if I could only get off my ass to write a book myself, maybe I wouldn’t feel so strongly.
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