Hot or not? The White Male

Oh, handsome white boy! You've reigned over our hearts for so long. Your innocuous good looks. Your Abercrombie ads. Your sly, "who me, cultural privilege?" grin. Omg, sooooo cute!!

And yet....

It's an unsure time for The White Guy. Well, sort of. According to Taylor Antrim of The Daily Beast, bookstores around the country are practically swimming in white man anxieties right now:

"[We have] a short stack of late-summer reading that’ll make you wonder: Why is white male discontent so naturally literary?....the novel, better than any other written form, accommodates those small-bore anxieties, the quotidian, often shameful preoccupations that turn us inside out but don’t really measure up to the global events of the day. You’re a white guy who’s a little depressed, your eye is wandering, and you sort of want a fast car? Try putting that into an Op-Ed. But for the novel, nothing is beneath notice."

Well-put, Taylor (and well-quoted, GalleyCat). It's interesting, because for a long-time in the publishing world, the formula has been:

Neurotic literary white guy + literary publisher = BF (best friends)

But according to the same story, white people overall will be a minority by 2042. Now that the White(ish) House is baROCKin', is the Woody Allen-esque hand wringing of well-to-do white guys enjoying its last literary hurrah?

Well in all honesty, anything this blogger could say on that would probably be a gross overgeneralization. Except for this:

Neurotic literary white guy + literary publisher + gayness = BFF (best friends forever!)

(See: David Sedaris).

As we look ahead to the literary tomes of tomorrow, it will be interesting indeed to see whether the White Guy anxieties we all know and love will keep their heralded place at our local bookstore, or whether they'll fade away faster than you can say "my therapist in Manhattan."

"I getz book deel? KThanxBai!" When Web sites become books

Sometimes, all it takes is a quick flash of inspiration to end your spell of writers block and get your book picked up by the ever powerful traditional publisher. Other times, all it takes is maintaining a Web site with pictures of cats and other small critters speaking broken English in block letters to land you a deal (bear with me, this is post is a legitimate one-I promise).

A few posts ago, Stephanie Mayabb talked about the recent rash of movie studios pulling inspiration from literature to fill the seats at the local cinema. Though blogs have been the source of book deals for years, I’ve noticed several, um, unique blogs being tapped by top publishers recently. Take a look:

LOLCats:

The LOLCats Web site presents several photos everyday of cats and other animals speaking “Kitty Pidgin”. I won’t get in to the linguistics of it all, but the sentences surprisingly make sense and animals are just so darn cute. The owners of the photos take pictures of their pets and then superimpose little sayings in block letters on them. It sounds insane, because it is, but the Web site has taken off and garners thousands of unique visitors each day. The site has even been featured in Business Week, TIME and the Wall Street Journal. Early this year, the proprietors of the LOLCats juggernaut secured a book deal with Gotham Books. The book will feature pictures from the Web site and will be narrated by Professor Happycat. You just have to check out the site to see what I’m talking about.

Postcards from Yo Mama:

Yesterday, GalleyCat and the site owners made the announcement that this blog will be the next to become a book. Another favorite of mine, Postcards From Yo Mama features reader submitted e-mails from mothers. My favorites are the IM transcripts. The blog definitely reminds me of the short-lived period during which my mother and I tried to communicate via IM.

Extreme Pumpkins:

For those of you who take pumpkin carving seriously, this is the Web site and book for you. The guide to jack-o’latern carving has been wildly successful. Released by Penguin in September 2007, it’s currently on its third printing and has sold over 10,000 copies. Author Tom Nardone made a bevy of high profile media appearances and you can track the book’s success here. I’m not precisely sure what order the Web site and book deal came in, but I can say I know that I’ll never carve a lame pumpkin for Halloween again.

And in an alternative to goofy coffee table pieces, books with more serious topics that were borne from blogs and Web sites have made waves as of late. The best example I can think of is the PostSecret project. The project began as an art exhibit in 2004 in Washington, DC. Creator Frank Warren launched the blog on January 1^st, 2005 at Blogspot and presently uploads 20 new postcards with secrets to the blog every Sunday. Since the project launched, Warren has published several books packed with secrets from people around the world and the blog won Weblog of the Year for 2007.