More Book Blah Blah Blah

Posted on December 11, 2004    Posted by John Scalzi      3 Comments

A couple of things:

* I’ve created a new Books section to the Web site, which you can see here. Nestled within this new book section, in an understated way, is an Old Man’s War Preview Page, which contains information about the book, some of the reviews, and an essay about the book, none of which will be news to recent readers here — and also a sample chapter, which might be. The books page also links to Agent to the Stars. At some point, when I’m not feeling lazy, I’ll put a permanent link to the book section here at the Whatever. But in the meantime it’s linked off the front page of the site.

* The folks at Amazon, perhaps disbelieving that people have read a book that’s not yet officially published, appear to have yanked down the customer reviews for Old Man’s War. I am of course sad — those were some fine reviews, and my thanks to those who posted them — but the good news is that the Publishers Weekly review remains. I guess Amazon decided it was possible someone at PW had actually read the book. Hopefully once the book is officially out in the world the customer reviews will return.

* I hadn’t paid attention to this until someone pointed it out to me, but back at the Amazon page, there’s an interesting dichotomy between what other books customers who bought my book also bought, and the books that people who viewed my book also viewed. Among the books also bought are a number of science fiction titles from Neal Stephenson and Elizabeth Moon among others, as well as James Lileks’ Interior Desecrations book. Among the books browsed were political books like Axis of Weasels by Scott Ott and The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century by James Bennett, as well as science fiction books Armor and Orphanage.

This is actually a residual illustration of the Instapundit Effect, because every book in the “viewed” category is one mentioned by Glenn either in conjunction with my book (in the case of Armor & Orphanage) or at some point in time close to when he mentioned my book (as is the case of the political tomes). I think it’s interesting that there’s not a huge amount of overlap between the two groups, but I have no idea what the implications of the variance might be. I do see Glenn’s influence in the purchases; he’s been a longtime booster of James Lileks’ book work. Of course, as have I. In any event, it’s an interesting testimony of how a mention on one Web site can leave a noticeable footprint on Amazon.