Image via WikipediaI love the internet, I love the internet even more when it helps build out community to support people and the things that they want to do. I love the internet and the blogosphere even more when it works to foster that community and help out people who are trying new things, using new media, digital goods, and how those can be used to help someone else. As well as how they can be used to support new ideas, new concepts in marketing, and be an enriching and rewarding experience for everyone involved.

As most people know I wrote a book, it is not the best book in the world, it is not an all time best seller, and yes I used booksurge, a self publishing company owned and operated by Amazon. Self publishers literally throw the book over the wall, and have to deal with marketing all on their own. Most writers have no clue about the marketing side of the house, and that is to be expected. Here is my story though, and why I love the blogosphere today, and just about everyone in it, and for all those folks who helped me out, a big shout out.

It started with a book, again not the best one in the world, could have used an editorial pass or three.
It sold ok for the first few weeks, but I wanted to do more with it, how far could this go?
I started a blog and tied it into Amazon
I started reviewing books to become part of the community
I threw the book at people and said “read it tell me what you think”
I gave away the free eBook on the new blog I set up for the book, but folks know about new blogs, I get about 25 people a day at the blog, it is new, has no Google juice, no money to plug the blog on an advertising channel, have to do this word of mouth.

Then I found Mininova, and bittorrent. They have a free upload for content makers, ok eBooks are not all that popular, but why not. And I did it and I blogged about it on IT Toolbox. This is where the blogosphere gets incredibly cool.

Torrent freak and my friend Ernesto talked to me and wanted to reprint the article on IT Toolbox, and I agreed. He though it was really cool that I dumped the eBook into Mininova, and was surprised and elated at how well it had taken off. As of this morning it had even equated to a small bump in sales. What made me really happy was that it had a huge take off in the third world, where people live on a dollar a day, a 14 dollar book is too expensive for them. Yet most of the information in the book would be valid from a global view point even if I did not write it from that perspective.

From the torrent freak article, the reprint, RSS feed scraping, word of mouth, and the wonderful response I got back from the Mininova Community, the idea that is being downloaded, shared, discussed, and reviewed globally, has done more for me feeling great about putting the Book into Bittorrent than just about anything else I have done lately.

The responses from the Blogosphere has been a rewarding and enriching experience over the last two days, and frankly a big shout out has to go out to everyone who blogged, discussed, reprinted, scraped, downloaded, read, and reviewed the book. You all win, we all win, and when the Blogosphere works in a way that we all end up with a positive experience, where we start the discussion, where we offer encouragement and support for doing something off the wall, that is why I blog. This is exactly why I blog, this is why I participate in communities, this is why today, and for as long as this good feeling lasts the biggest thank you, shout out, cheers to everyone who has made the last two days some of the most enriching and rewarding of my life.

Thanks everyone, let’s keep it going.

Tags: thank you, shout out, cheers, blogosphere, love, Mininova, torrent freak, bittorrent, author, book, experiment, cdn, global distribution channel, eBook, good, day