Blogger Gets $350,000 Book Deal

Since its January 2008 debut, the Stuff White People Like blog founded by Christian Lander and Myles Valentin has racked up 22.5 million hits. Lander, the main author of the blog, has just been offered a $350,000 book deal by Random House.

Personalize Your Books

Random House has just partnered with SharedBook to give users a chance to create personalized versions of some of its books via its website. The first book to go live is the classic children's book The Poky Little Puppy.

For $25.00, people can add a custom dedication to the book and upload a photo to the front of the book. The book is then printed on demand as a laminated hardcover. An uncustomized version sells for $4.99 on Amazon. Consumers have to sign a user agreement stating that the customized book is for their own use and not for resale.

Personally, I think they could have done more to personalize the book. For example, allowing consumers to add their child's name into the text of the book.



This is the first time SharedBook has partnered with a book publisher. It has previously partnered with Yosemite National Park, AllRecipes.com, the Little League, JumpTV Sports, and other websites to allow consumers ways to make books using the content on their websites.

SharedBook CEO Caroline Vanderlip is talking to other publishers about making similar offers. Check out SharedBook's website to find out how you could offer the same kind of personalization on your website.

They offer an API interface so you could do it if you know anything about programming API interfaces. Note: I don't. Here's a link to their how-to info on implementing an API: http://sharedbook.com/press/press/open_api_howto.html.

Below is one example of such an interface:

Random House's Insight Program

Random House's Insight digital book distribution is a really neat trick that allows users to search individual titles or entire book databases. Plus it allows book sales sites like Amazon.com as well as other websites and bloggers can insert Insight's widget into their sites to allow the same searches and previews. Their service could revolutinize the way books are sold on the web.

They are now offering their Insight program to other publishers under the direction of Mike Shatz, their digital vice president. For more information, check out http://www.randomehouse.biz.

One drawback to their service. Users have to update to Flash 9, but that's probably a good thing for users all around.