When Jonathan Franzen bashed Twitter, he was just carrying on the relentless crusade he’s waging against the Internet and social media every time he steps up to a mic. He’s like a bookish, bizarro world Chuck D. — Black Steel Glasses in the Hour of Social Media Chaos. The outrage he’s kicked off makes him kind of the closest thing literature has to a bad boy though. From Michelle Houellebecq to Jonathan Littell to Jonathan Franzen, middle aged white guys seem like the only ones who can generate high level righteous anger anymore.

But we’re a digital publishing operation so of course we’re piling on this Two Minute Hate. If Franzen’s railed against eBooks and decried Twitter, what better way to zing him then to make a Franzen targetted eBook out of Twitter itself?

We sourced some top tweets  from #jonathanfranzenhates and bookified them with Vook, thereby creating hypothetical Franzine kryptonite—a digital book version of a social media stream of tweets attacking the author for questioning its right to exist, wrapped up in another digital medium (the eBook) the author detests maybe more.

In movies, people are always realizing they’ve succeeded-but-too-ambitiously by doing something that symbolically indicates they’ve “destroyed the thing they love.” I think this happens in Boogie Nights, or Adaptation. If that TV trope has any basis in fact, our platform is definitely a victory, as it’s allowing us to cleverly abuse an author whose work we love. But so it goes in the digital future!

Click this link to get the ePub version of “The eBook Franzen Would Hate”

To download and read it, click here for instructions.

And much respect to Storify and the Guardian, whose Tweet stream story inspired us to make an actual eBook book.

Want to use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to connect with your customers, build your brand, and grow your profits?

Of course you do! It’s clear that a vibrant social media presence is essential to your company’s success, but if you’re like many others, you haven’t nailed down the perfect strategy.

Don’t believe naysayers who claim that social media success is a mystery – there are clear best practices that will launch your company to the next level – and you can find them all in our latest Vook, Groundswell.

Groundswell, the best-selling definitive guide to a researched, winning social media strategy, has been updated, enhanced, and is chock-full of new tools that will catapult your business into success.

New features include:

• Updated data on how customers use and perceive new media
• Two new chapters demystifying Twitter and determining where your organization needs to go next
• Two PowerPoint presentations you can download, customize and share
• Live hyperlinks to blogs, tweets, videos, and other media mentioned in the Vook to show you the strategies that work – and those that don’t
• Great video examples

New media moves fast – and so should you! Download Groundswell now – available as an iPad app or in iBooks.

I would like to take this moment to say thanks to everybody who participated in our Twitter contest to increase our audience on Facebook during March. We gave away $15 iTunes gift cards to 24 lucky winners. In the process, we doubled our Facebook presence and had a lot of fun, including creating some great tabs and giving away codes to some of our video guide apps.

I want to share the news that we have a lot of awesome stuff planned for our Twitter followers and Facebook fans in the coming days, so please make sure you follow and Like us to participate in some exciting happenings. I heard that my favorite person, Dr. Vook, Ph.D, might even make an appearance.