What put the book over the top? I can only guess it was the enemy of weak servers everywhere, the one and only Instalanche. Glenn, Helen and I had a fun chat and it's well worth listening to. I was reminded how well my thesis and that of An Army of Davids dovetail. Buy them both!
In non-fiction, it's Number 5:
Reed Hastings ("Belongs on your shelf between Tipping Point and Freakonomics") was more right than he knew.
http://www.szv.hu/csordas-attila/blog/20060712/niche-culture-long-tail-the-perspective-of-niche-science-philosophy
Interesting to read, that in the seventies and eighties, in the childhood of Anderson the only places in America to go outside mainstream were library and comic book shop which was definitely other than products of broadcast mass culture.
The traces go back to a part of culture, which was arrogantly called high culture before. I think that this culture was always persisted in a niche.
Now my comment is that the rising niche culture is a great possibility to revitalize science and philosophy in the niches and offers new and powerful tools extending them to other niche cultures only by shared interest and not by the commands of an ever cloudy "you must read this" authority. You'd better popularise science et al. with a bottom-up way, not by a top-down effort. Web is clearly the future of these disciplines.
Posted by: Attila Chordash | July 12, 2006 at 06:19 AM
I saw that review on your book I just received (thanks again!) and I can't believe that your book REALLY is 'between freakonomics and tipping point'! Whoa! Nicely done!
Posted by: avalon | July 12, 2006 at 09:24 AM
Impressed that you have coverage in fortune magazine, referenced on cnnfn (money).
Posted by: doug | July 14, 2006 at 11:16 AM