HarperCollins is paying Nick Douglas a five-figure sum for Twitter Wit, a book of the Gawker alum's favorite Twitter posts. Is getting paid for aggregating other people's "tweets" as lazy as it sounds?

Because it sounds somehow even lazier than making a book out of your mom's email messages, a scheme hatched up, perhaps not coincidentally, by another Gawker writer.

Douglas insists the work is backbreaking — "reading a thousand jokes is like watching five hours of porn" — but he's already automated the process of collecting submissions and permissions. Those who make it into the book get no royalties, but a free copy of the work ensures they at least won't have to pay to see their own content in printed format.

So we've seen blog books, internet cat-picture books, a family email book and now the first book collection of tweets. Remember when the internet was the desperate medium, and had to steal its content from the incumbent players, rather than everything working the other way around? Those sure were the days.

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