Chinese blogposts becoming blogbooks

John Kennedy at GlobalVoices has a wonderful translation of numerous Chinese blog posts about the latest media twist in the Chinese blogosphere: big name bloggers publishing books of blog posts.  Wish we knew more about who was reading them…people who can’t easily access the Internet?  Who would like to have more time online but don’t?  And of course, those who love the blog to begin with.  Here’s a commentary on the phenomenon by Blogger ZKT219:

Since spring this year we’ve seen an upsurge in famous bloggers publishing books. Xu Jinglei’s Old Xu’s Blog printed a hundred thousand copies. Soon after came Soho China president Pan Shiyi’s blogbook Pan Shiyi’s Blog. Wenhui Publishing House is working on Zheng Yuanjie’s blogbook Zheng Yuanjie, Sudden Blogger, and Lifeweek editor Wang Xiaofeng’s collection of blog commentary You May Not Associate: A Boring Person and His Boring Blog. [Note: book cover above, and also note that “Associate” does not mean “get together with” but rather “make links in one’s mind”]

…publishing blogbooks seems a little excessive….the publishing of blogbooks naturally has its limits. No matter what,
they’ll always only be records of things gone past and will never be
able to keep up with the internet.

 But many disagree, as this excerpt from blogger Tom Jian shows:

You May Not Associate proves there remains a reason for the
continued existance of white paper and black letters. First I wondered,
what’s the point of making a book out of things already written on a
blog? Isn’t this the age of looking at pictures and watching screens?
And this was all online stuff to begin with. Yet reading those words
after having been put on paper, they really do have flavor.