Top 100 Sri Lankan blog posts book project – what you can do.

Quite a few people liked the idea of my post about publishing the best 100 Sri Lankan blog posts in a book. Some floated good ideas on the specific details. So I have decided to follow up with this “what happens next post”. This post is about some easy guidelines to simplify how YOU (yes you, reading this) contribute.

3 essential thing to keep in mind:

1. This is NOT about the top 100 bloggers but about blog posts. 
2. The end goal is a traditional physical book that can be sold. Why a book? specifics deserves another post which will come later
3. The market for this book is a global one.

Right now I am not making any assumptions about the final list of posts or how they should be classified. There might be enough good posts for a book covering each year since the start of blogging in Sri Lanka (whenever that might be).

The critical first step of course is to make a list of posts to be considered. For this, your help  is needed.

What you need to do:

Write a post describing one or more posts you want to nominate for the list. You can’t nominate a post that you wrote (even if it is written on another blog).

Your post nominating post should contain:

• The URL of and title of each post you are nominating
• Describe the post in 5 sentences or less (to keep it short and to the point)
• State why you think  this particular post deserves to be included in the top 100.
• Add a link to your post in the comment box of this post (this is important of I’ll miss your nomination)

Yes, it is a bit more work than copy-pasting a URL. But for a post to qualify I think it should prompt a least one reader to make the effort.

Right now the language of the post doesn’t matter. If it is not in English please indicate if you are interested in translating it into English (incase the author isn’t). You could help out by contacting the author to find out if he/she is willing to do it.

It doesn’t matter if the post you nominate has typos/grammatical/spelling “issues”. If you think the post says something worthy in an interesting way despite such factors, you won’t be alone.

Rules thumb/standards

1. The post should be interesting enough that you actually read the whole thing without getting distracted.
2. The nominated post must not endorse or even be vaguely supportive of cannibalism
3. No slander/calumny/libel/slander/vilification/defamation or sorcery
4. The post must have to do with Sri Lanka – essentially the “kottu” standard.
5. No photo blog posts (those deserve their own tome). Use of images to illustrate a post will be scrutinised on a case by case basis by the SRCIHLCMC (Super Ruthless Committee for Ideological Hygiene and Low Country Mango Cultivation). Post like this will of course be permitted

Quite a few people have suggest some very good ideas to move things forward. But the essential first step is to gather up a “long list” of blog posts. 

Chances are this will be a long winded process. If there’s a communal loss of patience/interest this idea will join my ever growing pile of duds But that hasn’t happened just yet. 

So fire up you browsers and RSS readers and prowl the blogosphere. Happy hunting!

Post Script

In the interest of giving credit (or blame) for this idea: I got it from two sources. First a friend far way offered to edit my old blog posts. Right afterwords Indi put out a post on a A Blog/Print Business Model. This is the result of the brain gurgles of those two events. 

I’m shocked too.  ;)