BuzzMachine

What Would Google Do? is a month away. I know you’re not counting the days, but I am.

Here‘s its web home, where you can preorder the book (thanks in advance) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, or Powells. Here‘s its Facebook page, where the discussion will continue, I hope. As a hoot, the publisher (Collins) made a CafePress store, where you can order WWGD? buttons, mugs, and T-shirt (I’m holding out for hats and bumperstickers). There’ll be an audiobook (for which I tortured the producers reading at three times normal human speed; they had to find 100 nice ways to tell me to slow down), an electronic book, a V-book (an E-book with video), a Kindle version, and a video version. I’ll soon be posting WWGD?: The PowerPoint for free. The publisher also plans to put up pieces of the book for free; more on that later.

The book just got a blog review
from bookseller and author Drew Goodman: “The scariest chapter for me, was when Jarvis re-imagined the book publishing and selling business. I work in a bookstore. I write books. As an author, you write books and hope people like your words enough to pay for them. As a bookseller, you help people find authors that appeal to them so that they will buy the books from your bookstore. What if my livelihood were suddenly changed by an influx of free books on the Internet, or offering only ebooks. Is this such a bad thing, Jarvis asks. I began the chapter by screaming “Yes.” I ended the chapter by realizing that the Internet actually helps my business, both in writing and selling books.”

I couldn’t wish for a better response. (If only they were all like that.)

So far, I have one trip scheduled to California for the book. When and if other events are scheduled, I’ll update the book pages.

Pardon the hype. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum (though your idea of minimum and mine may be slightly different). Now we return to our regularly scheduled snark.

: LATER: Here’s the publisher’s official page for the book and a post on the new Collins Backstage blog. And, for amusement, they put up a countdown widget: