YouTube has completely renovated their website, and as a result, they have added several new categories for videos, including "Pets & Animals," "Autos & Vehicles," and "Nonprofits & Activism."

They have not, however, added any kind of category for literature, spoken word, poetry, book trailers, author interviews, audio books, or language education.

We feel this particular category is vital for the fortunes of publishing and for the fortunes of literature in general. Check out this long rant for a more in-depth analysis of why a YouTube "Literature" category is absolutely necessary for the rapidly-evolving future of the language arts.

Therefore, we are urging you to add your own "Literature" videos to the "Pets & Animals" category. If you do not have a video camera or "time," you can use this simple animated .gif as your background for a simple .mp3 recording of your favorite short story, poem, or essay:


This hypnotic cat will never give up. What haunts this cat? What has it seen and done? What tales does it have to tell?

Our goal is to flood the brand-new "Pets & Animals" category with miscategorized movies until Google takes notice of just how many "literature" videos there are out there. We are putting our entire back-catalog of recorded stories on YouTube this way, and we encourage other literary magazines, individuals, concerned citizens, audio book lovers, and spoken word enthusiasts to do the same, or at least help us agitate and mobilize.

If you already have "Literature" videos up on YouTube, we encourage you to recategorize them as "Pets & Animals" instead of what other category you might have already chosen for them, such as "Entertainment" or "Education." Since there is no good place for "Literature" videos, we might as well put them all in one place.

Here are some videos we have recently dumped into the "Pets & Literature" category. Here is "The Difference Between My Girlfriend and a Sea Captain," by Katie Coyle:



Here is "Eleventeen," by Nicolette Kittinger:



Here is "One Life," by Kevin Brown:



And here is one of my own tales, "Fear Boys With Dolls":



WITH STOUT HEARTS, AND WITH YOUR HELP, WE WILL PREVAIL!!!






Posted by miracle on Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:00:10 -0500 -- permanent link