yay for one of our newest pubs/books

[Guest guest]

a lil self pluggin here...

we worked like the dickens to get this out

 

 

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/12/MNG0AIQRPT1.DTL

 

 

 

Book tops charts before it's published

Influential bloggers, promotional video make 'Patriot' a hit

 

Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

 

Friday, May 12, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

Several bloggers have cranked out books, but a first-time San Francisco

publisher, with assistance from liberal bloggers, helped push one from obscurity

to the No. 1 spot on Amazon's best-seller charts in a day -- even before advance

copies were printed.

 

Written by lawyer-turned-blogger Glenn Greenwald, the rise of " How Would a

Patriot Act: Defending America from a President Run Amok " is a San

Francisco-forged tale of new media leading the old, in which a video created to

accompany the book was out before the bound copies, and the video's circulation

turned out to be more valuable than kudos from book critics. (See the video.)

 

There's been no advertising for " How Would a Patriot Act. " Didn't need any. It

was more important to get love from a handful of key bloggers, who plugged the

144-page book on their sites, leading to a virtually overnight advance sales

bump this week -- and a second printing of 20,000 copies. " Patriot " remained at

the peak of the Amazon charts for days.

 

Amazon.com spokesman Sean Sundwall said the only similar ad-less rise from

obscurity he could recall was " The Alphabet of Manliness, " an outgrowth of humor

site www.maddox.xmission.com. It hit No. 1 in March, three months before its

release, on the strength of an e-mail sent to 140,000 of the site's readers.

 

" Patriot " parachuted to 293rd place by week's end after hitting No. 1.

Nonetheless, the book's publisher, the San Francisco wireless, long distance and

credit card company and liberal benefactor Working Assets, plans to continue its

fledgling program of picking sharp bloggers to write politically pointed books.

 

" Patriot " is an offspring of Bay Area political activism and technology culture,

and the rush to get it into print has a distinct purpose: to foster national

debate about the Bush administration's approach to post-Sept. 11 civil

liberties, in particular the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance

program.

 

The book's rise without any mainstream media coverage has given liberal

political leaders hope that they have discovered a way to compete with

conservative media outlets that they estimate reach 30 million to 40 million

people a week. That's at least three times the reach of progressive outlets such

as the Air America radio network and liberal bloggers, said Simon Rosenberg,

head of the New Democratic Network, a liberal think tank focused on new

technology.

 

Rosenberg hopes it's the start of a liberal counterbalance to major conservative

book clubs, whose combined membership of 100,000 regularly pushes books up the

charts through presale orders. Still, he said, progressives have a long way to

go before they can compete with nationally syndicated radio hosts like Rush

Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, the right-of-center bent at Fox News and commentator

Michelle Malkin, whose blog is consistently among the top-ranked by

Technorati.com, which monitors the blogosphere.

 

----------

 

In mid-February, Nix asked Greenwald if he'd like to write a book. In early

March, he signed the deal. She offered him two publication dates: May or

September. He chose May, meaning he had six weeks to write the book, to be

followed by two weeks of editing.

 

" In terms of political events, September is a world away, " Greenwald recalled

telling Nix. " I couldn't wait that long. There is a crisis in our country, in

that the president of the United States not just broke the law but continues to

break the law. "

 

More than 200 readers volunteered to help him with research; he chose five. Over

the next six weeks, he wrote 225 pages. Only about 10 percent of the content was

culled from the blog, he estimated.

 

" What translates well is (bloggers') passion, " said Safir Ahmed, a Noe Valley

resident who was the editor on both Moulitsas' book and Greenwald's. " These are

guys who are on fire. They're not playing a role. They so passionately believe

in an issue that they're taking their time to blog about it. "

 

Editing a quickie book, especially one written by a blogger, is an evolving art.

There is less emphasis on writerly touches and more on creating a powerful

argument. The hardest part of Ahmed's work was done while outlining the book

through a dozen hours of prewriting conversation. After Greenwald finished

writing, he and Nix holed up in Ahmed's apartment for the final line-by-line

edit. It took two weeks of 20-hour days.

 

When it was ready, Nix e-mailed the book to seven influential bloggers -- just

asking them to check it out and, if they thought it was worthy, to mention it on

their blogs.

 

" I was thinking maybe it could go up to No. 500 on Amazon, " Nix said with a

laugh.

 

Within a month, Working Assets President Michael Kieschnick expects to give

another book contract to another blogger. " There's a market for new voices who

are not part of the political elite, " he said.

 

While Kieschnick awaits the hardbound books to hit shelves, the video for " How

Would a Patriot Act " created by New York artist David Olson is already buzzing

about the Internet. For a few months, Olson said, he had " been playing around

with " a pastiche of images -- from a 1946 scholastic film to still photos to

news clips -- revolving around domestic spying. When his old high school pal Nix

told him about the book, he mixed in an interview snippet of Greenwald, set it

to an electronica beat, and fired the 8 1/2-minute video off into cyberspace.

 

" The funny thing is that you have all these new technologies behind this, " Olson

said, and people end up reading the book " on an old technology piece of paper. "

 

 

What's gonna happen when the buses don't run

and what's gonna happen when the, winter comes

what are you gonna do,

what are you gonna do

when the oil runs out?