The Kirtsy Book: A Beautiful Bottle for New Wine
I have lots of memories of college: some are from my classes. My school prided itself on its ranking as the number one non-professional party school in the nation (Rollins College was considered the number one PPS at the time). But as the thrill of doing 12 oz. curls with 3.2 beer soon wore off, I realized that I was smack in the middle of an academic wonderland, and I started to pay close attention to the stuff they were teaching. At least in English class.
One of the big themes for undergraduates was transitions in literary forms that reflected transitions in social thought. Or, as the catch phrase went, you can't put new wine in old bottles. Well, you can, but since biblical times, they've warned that you'll pop the cork if you do.
So, since we are, as the Socialnomics video attests, in an age of change more massive than the Industrial Revolution, it seems only fitting that the publishing industry is looking hard for new bottles. Bottles that reflect change, hold change, and become provocative prisms for understanding change.
Easier said than done. Although our era forces us to digest change at a rate that would give even George Jetson heartburn, there aren't a lot of instructions. No road maps for this brave new territory. There's no AAA when we bog down on the road to the Future of Publishing, and in fact, if we do manage to make it over the pass without becoming the literary Donner party, there are no homesteads or other hostelries on the other side. But there are a few saloons offering camraderie and a cold one for weary travelers in this strange frontierland where the restless tribes of art, commerce and technology don't ever seem to find lasting peace.
Some of these pioneers lean to the digital, like Cursor and their wonderfully interactive vision of what a book can be. Others, like CellStories, stake their claim on the web world's need for speed and i-cessibility. And there are many other novel approaches to publishing out there. Certainly, there has never been such an exciting, chaotic time in the lifetime of the printed word.
Bright Sky Press has a history of making books for Texans. As we have often noted, Texans may pride themselves on their barbecue and their shiny silver spurs, but, when it boils down to it, they are a delightfully diverse crowd. Though many have tried to stripe them as Red or Blue, Texans cannot be easily pigeonholed. But they are known for being friendly, downright social. In every medium.
So when we had the good fortune to make friends with Laura Mayes, one of the founders of kirtsy.com, we realized that she had a story to tell that was of interest to Texans. Texans who really live in Texas, and metaphorical Texans--big hearted people who live anywhere in the world where there's wifi. And that's just about anywhere. Laura, and kirtsy, needed a book to document, to archive, and to celebrate the new tribe they were creating online. And we thought we were just the ones to publish it.
When we started looking for a bottle to hold this heady new wine, we couldn't find one that seemed to fit. What was this book called Kirtsy Takes a Bow? What was a book of blogs, tweets and beautiful design bits--material that had appeared on line before--supposed to look like? What commentary did it need? What would raise it from rehash and make it a vehicle worthy of bearing the amazing ambassadresses of kirtsy in the mainstream publishing parade? It was a daunting thought. Did it need to be an electric car? A Prius? Or some completely new contraption?
As Laura worked hard tracking down material that she thought was representative of the dawn of the kirtsy movement--the Founding Mothers' Best of the Best--we began working with her to solve that puzzle. We were torn between two mediums, feeling like a fool. Then, after lots of conversation, laughing and crying over the material that began pouring in, and philosophizing at the Mom 2.0 Summit, it all started to come together.
The kirtsy book needed to show the energy of the living, breathing, real-time kirtsy site and all the women who keep it pulsing, but it also needed to archive what they were doing, to raise it up from the fast-moving, ephemeral content stream. It needed to say, "You matter forever." " It's your birthday." "Let's stop and take some pictures and not just leave them in the digital camera, but let's print them out and put them on the wall." "Let's celebrate." In technicolor. In hardcover. On the coffee table.
And then it all made sense, and it seemed inevitable that the bottle for the spirit of kirtsy wouldn't be any old longneck or even a regulation crystal decanter. It's it's own thing--it's a little bit book-y, a little bit blog-y, with a touch of the magazine eye-candy sensibility we love. It's a freeze frame on right this minute: two hundred and some gorgeous pages that fit in perfectly with this eclectic, delightfully anachronistic era where we can read Plato on a Kindle sitting on a mid-century chair or we can read the best of a web content aggregate site in a luxuriously beautiful coffee table book on a fast moving train.
Change is inevitable, but the kirtsy book reassures that it doesn't have to be scary. It can be warm and full of love. We can have the ability to go fast, but choose to linger. Modern doesn't have to be a highly technical or dystopian Transformers affair. Having choices may allow us to barbecue a few sacred cows, but it does not necessitate throwing everything we've loved on the fire. How we meet change is our perogative, and there is room for richly varied approaches.
I chose one that is a little bit old, a little bit new. A little bit country, and a little bit...well, you know. Join us at Bright Sky as we raise a toast to a new book from a new bottle. As Katherine Center so eloquently puts it: this one's for the girls!
It's a celebration!
(photo by @lmayes from stop #2 on The Kirtsy Book Event Tour of Justice)
