The Blog, Considered as Book
I don't have any accurate estimate of the total number of words I have posted to this blog over the years, and am not sure how I would get one, short of copying the whole thing to a word processor and having it count them. But my guess is that it would come to substantially more than the word count of one of my books.
Which suggests an interesting possibility. Select out a suitable subset of posts, polish them a little, organize them a little, and publish them as a book. Think of it as a low work way of producing my equivalent of the four volume Orwell collection that I have commented on here from time to time.
At which point the next question is, "why bother?" The blog is, after all, already here. Anyone curious as to my extended exchange with Robert Ellickson, or my coverage of the Texas FLDS mess, or my recent views on self-publishing, can use the blog's search engine to find them and read them. Failing that, with sufficient patience, he can page through past posts; they are all there.
Which suggests that perhaps this will become the new substitute for a book, at least for the sort of book that consists of an extended collection of essays.