(2011-06-20) Maintaining Booklike Narrative Over Blog Stream

Reading a bunch of Book Publishing-related stuff this morning, the (Non-Fiction) book smells awfully dead to me. The publishing process adds some value to the content (tightening up Focus, language, etc.), but

• 80% of value seems to be about the selling/merchandising/marketing side, but (a) publishers have been turfing the marketing for non-hits, and (b) the other stuff is really about getting into Book Stores, and that game seems like its in end-game;
• the cost (in terms of calendar time) seems too high.

So I'd like the Printed Book, and even the EBook/Book Server models, to go away (at least for Non-Fiction), in favor of something more Real Time.

• Contradicting myself: I need to be able to read Off-Line easily, as long as it's cheaper to have WiFi-only Tablet to read on. Though you'd think we'd have some better support for this in the Web Browser by now (Web Storage).

Conversely, a WebLog tends to feel too disconnected, esp. for someone just starting to read that writer. "How does all this stuff fit together?" Do you start from the oldest-archives and read forward? Or start reading and let a sense of Narrative "emerge" over time? Does the About page help?

A WikiLog has some benefits in that you can create any number of navigation/anchor pages (I use My Recent Key Pages for that, esp "roadmap" pages), and can use BackLinks, esp Visible Backlinks, to get from those pages to the appropriate bits of the stream. You could treat each of these, or any collection of these, like a Thin Book/WikiBook with links into streams of details.

How Make Money?

• A Paid Site with Metered Pay Wall seems promising...
• But many people want to keep a free stream out there....
• Maybe BlogBit pages are all-free (don't count toward Metered Pay Wall allocation), but Wiki-type nodes invoke Metered Pay Wall?
• Might want some Premium layer for a smaller group of people. Support Coaching/Consulting? Mastermind Group?