Kindled

Would you pay to read this blog? The answer would probably a resounding no. We may get upset but the reality it isn’t what you pay for and there are plenty more where this came from.

However, Amazon's latest experiment may start people to think about the value of the things they read as they try to persuade consumers to pay for online content such as blogs. By paying a nominal price for a subscription, users can have automatic access to their favorite blogs. Well we couldn’t ignore the opportunity to experiment with them so as of a day soon (it has to be moderated first) those of you in the US with a Kindle will be able to read this blog. Obviously any colour, animations will be missing but it will be interesting to watch and we never cease to be amazed at what happens in this new world.

It will be interesting to see what the subscription price will be set at and if there are any takers.

200,000 Read Mieko's Blog

Mieko Kawakami, has just been heralded as Japan’s biggest literary star. Her fame has not been created between the jackets but on the Internet were her poetic, street-wise writing has not only stood out among the many Internet diaries but has achieved the 31-year-old, former bar hostess and bookstore clerk, this year's Akutagawa Award. Theaward is named after "Rashomon" author Ryunosuke Akutagawa and is Japan's most prestigious honor for a new writer in Japan.

According to the blog trackers Technorati Inc, there are more blog posted in Japanese than any other language, some 37% or 1.5 million a day. Postings in English only account for 36% of all blogs are, according to., which tracks nearly 113 million blogs globally. Last year, Technorati found 37 percent of all postings were in Japanese - about 1.5 million per day and greater than all the postings in English, 36%. It is said that more content in Japan is personal in it nature whilst in the US and UK it is media orientated and news based.

Kawakami's readership has skyrocketed from its early days in 2003 to around 10,000 a day and a staggering 200,000 on the day she won the Akutagawa. She started the blog to draw attention to her music, but the early entries became her first book. Her third book won the Akutagawa.

Kawakami's award-winning novella, "The Breast and the Egg," covers new territory in Japanese literature; divorce, the question of beauty and solitary womanhood and have huge appeal to Japanese women.

Will blogs become books or authors become blogers? The book is starting to cut itself free from the book straightjacket and creative writing will continue to flourish irrespective. Japanese culture is significantly different from western culture but the remarkable acceptance of the blog and Keitai novels will have an influence on all in this global market.

Blogsquare

In response to a Blog on Booksquare re Blogs http://www.booksquare.com/blogging-in-the-21st-century/ ,we wrote

The format has always dictated the form of writing or content. The book has for a long time been seen by many as being of a fixed size, containing x number of words and x pages. It has front matter, content and end matter. It has in fact been a straightjacket to creativity in that it has dictated what many write even how they write. Have creators adapted to it? Yes. Have some great works been created in it? Yes.

Today we are starting to explode the spine and in doing so express ourselves outside of the jacket. Is that wrong or right? Who cares? Creativity and expression is not a book nor is it a blog or anything between. Dickens wrote in instalments and some Japanese authors are doing similar today in their writing for mobiles.

Is blog software constricting? Does it pass the 'fit for use' test? Who cares? Just like all content the slush will sink and the worthy will rise to the top