DailyCandy Aspires to Book-ness

by jordan | July 9, 2008 at 01:50 pm | 124 views | add comment

I remember reading DailyCandy for research when I worked in design-oriented sales in NYC. Their site has definitly grown since then, becoming a trend juggernaut. Indeed, DailyCandy has joined a bevy of blogs that are now books.

Why, though, the need to consummate one's online success by such an old-school form?

It was the launch party for girly e-newsletter DailyCandy's new book, The DailyCandy Lexicon: Words That Don't Exist But Should, at the McNally Robinson bookstore-cafe in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood. Refreshments consisted of rum cocktails and, not surprisingly, candy.

Sample entry in the book: "textual frustration: a late-night text exchange that fails to result in old-fashioned lip-locking." DailyCandy staffers told me that about half the entries in the book are wholly original, and the other half are sourced from "Lexicon"-themed DailyCandy e-mails from over the years.

The party was mostly full of DailyCandy's own sundress-clad legions--the company employs about 60 people--and their friends. Fellow blog folk were few and far between, though a handful of people from nearby new-media companies like Flavorpill and Gawker showed up. So did Bob Pittman, the MTV executive turned AOL executive turned Pilot Group chief, whose investment firm owns a majority stake in DailyCandy. (Regrettably, Pittman left before I had a chance to ask him about his reported foray into the tequila business.)

I also didn't get a good answer to this question: Why is there such an impulse to turn a blog (or, in DailyCandy's case, an online newsletter) into a book?

This (somehow) reminds me of Tila Tequila, the aspiring singer who broke friendster by having too many contacts. She then blew up Myspace, likely contributing to its ascendancy in the web firmament. However, she then appeared on an MTV reality show, which seems to me the antithesis of what her Myspace crusade was all about. Is this web-to-book and web-to-TV a confirmation that online isn't everything, or is there still a perception that a content creator can somehow get more out of existing outlets, even as they dis them?