Visit Blookist and the most inspiring part of their website is in an obscure place — the address bar. “You don’t need an excuse to be creative”, it reads. Still in beta, Blookist is a new kind of publishing platform. That was how its co-founder and CEO, Adrian Zuzic, described it to me when he got in touch recently, asking if I would be interested in reviewing their startup.

Blookist is the content-appreciative publishing platform we had all been waiting for.

At first, I was confessedly disinterested: was this just another Obtvse, another Svbtle, or another Ghost? At a time when blogging platforms seem to be cropping up at every nook and cranny, why did I have to pay any attention to Blookist? Was this another ambitious platform started with enthusiasm that would lose direction halfway through?

As I looked around, however, it was hard for me not to realise this was not a blogging platform; it was something more, something unique, and, most importantly, something promising. I signed up for free immediately and over the next couple of days began to explore this further. It had caught my attention.

An update to this article with clarifications from Adrian Zuzic can be found at the end.

Blogs everywhere, meet books

Blookist appeals to the minimalist in me. It carries a bold, yet not overbearing, design. However the fact that it has absolutely no introductory text other than “bridging the gap between a blog and a book” makes it nearly impossible for somebody who stumbles upon it by chance to understand what it is all about. My other minor nag also started right at log in: hitting the log in button takes you to a second page. In this age, it is elementary stuff to have an ajax-type (or similar) login form that just appears rather than directs a user to a second page.

Once you sign in — signing in is itself a quick job — you are greeted by a pleasant grid based layout of books. At first it is easy to mistake these to be articles, until you notice the post count below. This was where I noticed a second curious design choice: the post count and sub-title are not clickable; the image and title are. This is not a big issue, but it would have been nice to have a fully clickable tile.

Blooks

Blookist is a portmanteau of blogs and books; it is, at heart, a publishing platform, but with a twist: while blogs are a collection of all articles, blooks are a collection of articles filed under a category that are held as an online book. Swiping flourishes to Blookist’s horizontal scrolling add an enhanced feeling of reading a book.

Trivial as it seemed to some when I introduced people to it, the core idea behind Blookist — that blog posts on a category or series need to be found together, much like a book — is something that should have been here long ago.

Logos and navigation

I hate to dwell on design issues, but I noticed inconsistencies in the Blookist logo. I counted three types: a black-outlined hexagon logo, a filled black circle logo around authors, and a round-cornered square favicon. Why they opted for three logos is beyond me, and disparates rather than ties the product.

Moving between articles with clicks and drags works beautifully, so does two-finger swiping on my computer in one direction (forwards), but when I tried to return left, it kept sending me back to the blook cover page. Scrolling up and down works, but overscrolls one set of articles. All in all, scrolling not as smooth as I would like, but then Blookist is still in Beta.

The essence of making blooks

Blookist solves one of my biggest problems with other platforms like Medium and Svbtle: while I can choose to, I do not have to entirely blog on Blookist. This is especially important for those of us who have been blogging for close to a decade now. Indeed one can keep Blookist as a collection of their best works, perhaps even categorised, perhaps as a portfolio, or with one blook per topic, or one can use Blookist to release an actual book complete with chapters and a contents page.

Speaking of content pages, blookist automatically makes a nifty contents section with an article contributing to one heading. This helps organise your blooks, and it helps readers navigate quickly, much like a real book. This is hidden behind a translucent three-line menu icon accessible from any page, which was a good choice, given how Google et al. are making this approach increasingly popular, almost synonymous, to a menu across all devices. Also found here are sharing options and a one-click subscribe/unsubscribe button.

A clean layout, but too clean?

Blooks can have single columns, double or triple, with three tall columns showcasing articles. This is one of few customisations available for writers, which brings up the dreaded question of too much customisation versus too little: how does one strike a balance? I could make an argument for or against either, but I digress, given how subjective this sort of a decision can be.

One spot on the menu that can do with some improvement is the addition of a tooltip. Having decided to stay minimal with only icons for a menu, it becomes important to understand not everybody sees things alike. A quick tooltip when hovering on an icon will go a long way in making it easy and fast for a new user to understand the site. Also, I found it curious that the only way I could get to the password change and account deletion settings page was by first going to the profile settings page and using directional arrows. This important page should have been given its own link right in the main menu.

In comparison

I am not a big fan of comparing products, but sometimes one just feels things. Long back, I spoke about Ghost and the poor choice of sticking to node.js (at least for the moment, when node.js is yet to pick up). Thankfully, I see no such glaring problems with Blookist. However I could not help noticing it borrowed a lot — unintentionally, no doubt — from Medium. Things such as a green loading bar at the top of the page, a dark grey square button on the top-left, the large featured image followed by a clean article section beneath it, the hovering inline attachment options on the post editor and so on are all reminiscent of Medium.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but for somebody like me who has been using Medium since its inception, this makes it seem like Blookist needs to work on building around itself a stronger sense of individuality. The post editor also reminded me of Svbtle, where I had been blogging in its early stages, when it was invite-only. However the choice of green hover colour on the “Add image” button just seems weird and unthought — it seems too fluorescent and does not fit into Blookist’s otherwise elegant colour palette.

Other observations

I began writing a regular review of Blookist, but then scrapped it in favour of a more counselling tone — or just friendly banter, if you would not mind — because that was how much I liked it. I also noticed that written posts can be rearranged via drag and drop. There are also dedicated photo and video articles alongside wordy ones. Two glaring omissions I noticed were, firstly, that there was no option to preview an article when writing it. If there was, the fact that I looked and could not spot it speaks volumes by itself.

Secondly, I noticed there was no markdown support; perhaps it is on the way, but if it is not, it should be — for making things future-proof if nothing else. Further, the mobile site, when viewed on my phone, looked like it could do with a little work, especially around the top menu icons. The swiping experience here, however, seems superior to that on a computer.

Making money, shelling money

Monetising your blook is also possible. I think the team at Blookist says it best:

Although there have been many ideas on how to monetize online content we opted for a most proven one and made it simpler. We call it – a reward. We wanted to make it as simple as buying someone a cup of coffee so every reward comes with a “real-life” price attached to it. Now you can concentrate on writing and start accepting “rewards” for your work directly on your Paypal account. We take no cut and hold no funds as it would go against our principles to take something away from your own talent.

In short, Blookist comes with two well-priced options: free and $2 per month. The latter, termed pro, allows writers to offer subscription based pricing alongside rewards (read, donations) that the free plan allows. Further, the pro plan ensures you get new features down the road for free. Paying in bulk (for a year, for instance,) does not give you any discount — it should. A refreshing strategy long overdue on Internet services is a 100% revenue; Blookist promises not to take a percentage of its users’ earnings. Let us hope they keep it that way.

Will you join Blookist?

“For every story there is a blook”, goes a line on the website. And it sums up the direction the London-based startup intends to take. The categorised publishing idea driving Blookist is strong: it is more than just an attempt at being a better-looking platform; instead, it is all about being a different platform, without the mad desire to rake in usernames.

The team describes the Blookist project as a lifelong campaign. The Blookist team plans to make this into an independent, social magazine. That would be in the same spirit as Medium, but vastly different by structure.

Blookist should make an effort to encourage long-form articles, perhaps broken into chunks, but lengthy, thoughtful articles nonetheless. That will be the ribbon on the gift: Blookist’s elegant interface backing long, well-written content will make readers who appreciate quality writing return ceaselessly to read more. They would also do well to include users of the free plan in their featured lists — just because a writer is not paying, it does not mean his writing is not worthy of being featured. In fact, consider his good writing as a fee that will bring in more readers.

There is certainly some ironing out to be done, as mentioned in bits all over this article, but Blookist is definitely on the right track. It is the content-appreciative publishing platform we had all been waiting for. And if the team stays as open to people’s opinions as it is now, few things can come between them and their dream community creative centre to embody everything Blookist stands for.

Visit Blookist →

Update

Adrian Zuzic had a few interesting things to share with me yesterday with regard to this article. Here are some important bits:

On a Blookist social magazine

We are already thinking about building a new Blookist platform from the ground up to incorporate our social magazine idea, however it will all depend on how the current platform will be accepted by the blogosphere.

On apparent similarities with Medium

Although the simplistic article creation was part of our first prototype more than 2 and half years ago, we decided to include a text editor for the beta as well. To keep it clean we needed to hide the editor bar and after testing some prototypes the Medium inspired version worked out best.

On the unique future of Blookist

We are building a flat organisation where members will be heavily involved in the process with their thoughts, reviews and ideas – in a way co-owning the startup. It won’t just make Blookist a better platform, if successful, the concept could be used as an industry blueprint.

Well, that was truly refreshing. Also, my thanks to Adrian for promoting my account to Pro membership. I do wish Blookist great success.

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