Category: Book Related

First we had readers in the Dublin airport, now it’s the Munich airport, with reader Oliver Thylmann deep in the pure literary joy that is The Search (nice bubble chair, buddy).

By the way, last week you guys pushed the book to #10 on the BusinessWeek best seller list. THANK YOU!

At MediaPost, Gord Hotchkiss, a search consultant, wrote the kind of review every author wants to get. What might that be, you ask? A rave? Well, sure. A review that understands the core intent of your work? Most certainly. But what really got me was the comparison to a high school sweetheart turned pinup girl:

Reading it was a unique experience for me. It was addictive, like literary crack. I devoured it in huge gulps. I can’t recall the last time I read a book in such a short time. Look, They’re Writing About Us!…”The Search” is unlike any previous volume written on search. There have been several “how-to” books that have explored the mechanics of search, both from a user’s and marketer’s perspective. But Battelle for the first time explores search as a business and social phenomenon. Not only that, he muses that it might be THE social phenomenon, with world-shattering implications. For anyone who has grown up in search, it’s like seeing your high school sweetheart become a world-famous centerfold. “See, I told you she was hot. No one believed me!”

Last minute note – in other words, I forgot to mention – but I am doing what may be my last official book tour reading tonight on my home turf of Marin, at the Corte Madera Book Passages. 7 pm, here’s a link to it on Yahoo Maps.

Though this marks the last official book reading, what I have come to realize is that the tour really never ends. Loads of folks have come calling asking me to come and speak, and I am trying to do as much as I can. And I still get to go to London next month for the FT book award. Cool!

OK, this is entirely self referential, but I just love seeing the cover of my book in Portuguese. Here’s the Brazilian version of The Search – a Busca. I must say, the Brazilian press has been a joy to work with.

I’ll be heading up to Seattle Monday bright and early, to speak at both Microsoft and Amazon. I return Tuesday afternoon. We don’t have a bookstore signing set up there, but maybe we can meet up in the bar at the W if you’d like. Just let me know….

This is my second to last book tour event. I go to Vegas for a talk Weds, back Thursday. Then, a few talks here and there through November and December, but nothing really requiring major new trips. I am really, really tired, and very, very happy with how the book did. Onwards….

Update: So it looks like if any Seattle Searchbloggers want to meet up, let’s do it at around 7 pm, lobby bar of the W in downtown Seattle. I’ll be the one with a bourbon and a menu…

Quite a few readers have emailed me asking why the heck Amazon is suggesting a book on beer might be what they want next. I think it may be that the Author, Steve Hindy, has written about technology in the past, and folks who bought those books also bought The Search.

But this next book he’s written is pretty far off the mark: “Steve Hindy’s Beer School : Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery.”

I take no credit for this. I drink far more wine than beer as of late….

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I’ll be signing and reading at Barnes & Noble today in San Jose. Details:

Monday, October 3

7:30PM

Barnes & Noble

3600 Stevens Creeks Blvd.

San Jose, CA 95117

408-984-3495

If you are around, come on by!

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Scoble wants more from my book, so he writes it up, and the comments are flowing in. Cool!

On the subject of why he thinks engines are doing a poor job, (using a hotel search as an example), he asks:

So, what COULD search engines do? Well, first, give me some choices at the top of the page. Why couldn’t search engines ask you these questions:

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