Whoever said that writing a book would be easy was mistaken, but the good news is that after a 6 month journey of preprint and test readers, through editing and more editing, adding and subtracting content, the book “Boom and Bust in the Blogosphere” has finally showed up for sale. You can purchase the book here if you want, but really excited about this.
The idea behind the book was to take a look at the most popular bloggers and work out how they got that way. There were some surprising conclusions, many of the most popular bloggers have a background in journalism, marketing, or have used blogging to capitalize on popularity built elsewhere. There is also a review of some of the blogs that have failed, or bloggers that have been silenced due to lawsuits, hate and threats, or simply fired for blogging. The book is heavily researched using the internet, the bloggers own words as written on their blogs, and many other sources. The unique idea was to move away from interviews with the bloggers due to some interesting circumstances around the initial early interviews, threats of lawsuits, and some really interesting late night early morning e-mails dealing with some truly negative reactions to what I was writing in comparison to the interview and what was in public record.
That is what makes this interesting, and what made it fun to write, was that there is a wealth of information on blogging, bloggers, and the impact blogging has had on how we communicate to each other, or groups of people. It does not matter if the blogger is loved or hated, it does not matter what the groups do, in the end it is interesting to see what impact blogging and bloggers have had on society. There are companies struggling with citizen journalism, blogging, and social networking. By taking a look at how people got popular, where they came from, how they managed controversy, and what made them popular is always good to know. The book is more about case studies and conclusions than it is about anything else. So I hope you like it, this book was over a year in making.
I just want to call out though a number of folks who really helped me out; even if they don’t know they helped me out. First and foremost was Marshall Kirkpatrick who read the initial version of the book, panned it, and really made me stop and think about what I was doing. I got for free what I could not have gotten any other way, and Marshall’s input was needed, because I would not have listened to anyone else. I also want to thank Louis Gray, Michael Frutcher, and Locutus. You have no idea the influence these people have, and they are truly wonderful people, they have helped me find my blogging voice that extends into my nascent writing career. I owe them beer, many beers, or many drinks of choice, and if they are ever in Seattle, they need to hook up and go find a dark grotto somewhere. All three of these bloggers have provided more input indirectly than I could have hoped for, and that is what makes them wonderful. They believe in community, they believe in people, and are generally optimistic and positive. I appreciate that.
While of course I want you to go buy the book (right here if you missed the link at the top of the page), I am also interested in what people think. So in the next couple of months I’ll be posting the free version of the book on the site as a PDF.
(Cross-posted @ TechWag)
Happy to help! Congrats on completing it!!