Congratulations go out to Gina Trapani, editor of Lifehacker.com on the release of her book Upgrade Your Life (John Wiley & Sons). The book is actually the 2nd edition of Gina’s book Lifehacker but contains more than 50 new and revised time saving tips and techniques. The book shipped on March 17th and has consistently remained in the top 4-500 titles on Amazon since.

For those of you who might not be familiar with the concept, a “lifehack” is essentially a trick or technique for making your life easier and more productive using your computer. The book provides literally hundreds of ways to help you organize your life and make things run more smoothly and efficiently. The great thing about it is that rather than being a complete productivity system that requires you to radically change the way you do things (like Getting Things Done, for instance), you can pick and choose which tips you want to use and incorporate them into your own personal work style.

LaunchBooks client Wagner James Au’s exciting new book The Making of Second Life will be released later this month by Collins, but C|Net News.com just published a terrific review.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

One thing that struck me was a long passage of Au’s about how much Rosedale’s 1999 visit to Burning Man, the annual countercultural arts festival held in the Nevada desert, influenced his view of what the virtual environment he was building should be.

“‘So you’d lay on the pillows,’ Rosedale recounts, eyes twinkling at the memory,” Au writes, “‘and you’d feel like an exotic Asian king, and you’re looking out on the parched (desert); the line of sun starts at the edge of the rugs, and you see that hot desert, and you imagine you’re Kublai Khan on a bender…They were just structures of the mind…It reinforced that idea that what we believe in or what we make of things is all that is real. It was unreal because everything was clearly made of found materials and was transitory. But it was real, because when you were there, it was real to you…It had this mystical quality that demolished the barriers between people.’”

Rosedale’s epiphany? There was a magic going on out there in the desert–a way that people dealt with each other and laid down their disbelief–with which he wanted to imbue his virtual world.

“Though it wouldn’t exactly fit in a business plan,” Au continues, “it was an intuition he’d pursue in building Second Life into a full-fledged online world.”

One thing I enjoyed about this anecdote was that it was in the book at all. Over the years, Rosedale had mentioned to me personally many times how important Burning Man was to him. Honestly, though, I’d always thought he was kind of buttering me up, because he knew I’m a long-time attendee and participant.

But I also know that Au has never been to Burning Man, so for this to make it into the book, to me, lends it a veracity I never thought it had.

Interestingly enough, the writer of the review is Daniel Terdiman, author of the excellent Entrepreneur’s Guide to Second Life (Sybex) and another LaunchBooks client. But before any of you conspiracy theorists get your heads spinning, I didn’t have anything to do with the review. Second Life is part of Daniel’s beat at C|Net and he has been writing about it almost as long as James has, so it’s natural for him to cover a new release like this.

Congratulations go out to Jonathan Watts, the award winning China correspondent for the UK Guardian, on the sale of his book When a Billion Chinese Jump. Scribner will publish the book in North America and Faber has acquired the English language rights for the United Kingdom and the European Union.

When a Billion Chinese Jump will provide a ground up exploration of the stark choice facing China: to become the world’s first green superpower or an agent of global ecological disaster. The book will be the definitive account of how China’s addiction to growth will impact people all across China and around the world in the coming years. It will detail how China’s current path is absolutely unsustainable and will result in foul air, filthy water, rising temperatures and encroaching deserts for the entire world. However, it will also offer hope, as humankind’s greatest threat is also its best opportunity for change.

In a country that within the last decade has experienced the greatest migration in human history and unparalleled transformation, nothing is certain and everything seems possible. But if true change is to occur the Chinese leadership must come to understand that the environment is an area where China can take the global leadership role that it craves. In the 19th century, Britain and Europe taught the world how to produce. In the 20th century, the United States taught the world how to consume. In the 21st century, China must teach the world how to sustain. When a Billion Chinese Jump will be an effort to add to the discussion and help the world’s most populous nation understand both the opportunity and the impact of its choices in the coming years.

Congratulations go out to Roy David Eskapa on the sale of his book The Cure for Alcoholism. The book presents a radical new approach to treating alcoholism wherein patients literally drink themselves sober. The method described in the book was developed by the highly renowned alcoholism researcher Dr. David Sinclair and is supported by more than 60 clinical studies around the world. That includes the largest ever human trial in alcoholism, the landmark Project Combine study, which was initiated in 2001 and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May, 2006.

However, the method is not well known in the US even among experts and despite evidence that shows this method achieves success rates up to 80%, whereas traditional methods typically achieve a 15% success rate, it was a challenge to find a publisher with the vision to pick up the book. That’s understandable, as the idea that abstinence is the only acceptable method of treatment for alcoholism has roots that run deep in our society.

We’re very pleased that Glenn Yeffeth, the Publisher of BenBella Books, believed in the book and was excited about taking it on. If you haven’t heard of BenBella yet, they’re the publishers of the bestselling The China Study, another unconventional health title that has received widespread acclaim. Here’s hoping BenBella has a similar success with The Cure for Alcoholism and that the book provides a solution to some of the 18 million+ people in the US alone who struggle with alsoholism.

Congratulations(!) go out to Angela Dove on the sale of her book No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder, to the Berkley division of Penguin Putnam. Here’s a quick description:
In the Spring of 1988 Jacque MacDonald’s oldest daughter, Debi Whitlock was murdered in her California home only a few feet from Jacque’s sleeping granddaughter. There were few clues, no suspects and no answers coming from law enforcement. With limited resources and no political, legal or media connections, Jacque embarked on a nine year quest to find her daughter’s killer.

What Jacque didn’t know was that the police did have a suspect. To law enforcement all signs pointed to her daughter’s husband Harold as her killer. Harold had both motive and opportunity, but the police couldn’t accumulate enough evidence to arrest him. Jacque didn’t believe Harold had done it, but while Jacque told her daughter’s story on talk and true crime shows such as “America’s Most Wanted,” audiences nationwide came to share the belief of those investigating Debi’s murder: Harold was guilty.

As Jacque relentlessly pursued her daughter’s murderer, friends and relatives watched Harold’s life disintegrate, as it seemed that everyone around him believed he had killed his wife. Meanwhile Jacque became known as one of the foremost victim’s advocates in the nation. She created a television show called “The Victim’s Voice” which is dedicated to helping victims of violent crimes and is broadcast into 2 million homes in Northern California every week. Jacque was also recently awarded the 2007 National Victims’ Service Award in a ceremony held in the Ronald Reagan Building at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue and presented by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Another compelling aspect of this story is that in the vein of Sebastian Junger’s A Death in Belmont, the author of this book is Harold Whitlock’s daughter and Debi’s step-daughter. In fact, Angela Dove was the last person to see Debi alive the night she was murdered, and she brings a fascinating perspective to this story, as even she wasn’t certain whether her father may have been guilty.

Did Jacque’s tireless efforts ultimately did lead directly to the capture of her daughter’s killer? You’ll have to check out the book for that answer, but it will be well worth your time as this is a fascinating story of the way a murder sends shockwaves through the lives of everyone around the victim.

Back in February I had the wonderful experience of sitting in on a casting call for a new PBS seris that launches this weekend called Everyday Edisons. The show will follow 7 inventors through 14 weekly episodes as their inventions are taken from rough idas to store shelves by an expert tea of industrial designers, engineers, marketing experts and web designers.

I’m working with Louis Foreman, the Creator of Everyday Edisons, on a book project that will be a tie-in to the show and he invited me down to see one of their casting calls for the second season in person. And what I saw was tremendously interesting. The lines began forming early in the morning and by the time the first staff members arrived to set up, there were already hundreds of inventors waiting outside the studio in lines winding down the sidewalk, filling out registration forms on clipboards and carrying products of all shapes and sizes. By the time I arrived at about 10AM, a couple hundred inventors had already pitched their ideas and the halls were buzzing with inventors talking with each other about their ideas and showing off their gadgets.

To handle the large volume of inventors and make sure everyone had plenty of time to pitch their ideas, they had six screening rooms, which each had 5-6 product marketing experts, patent attorneys, and manufacturing gurus (the show paid to fly in more than 50 experts for the casting call) to assess each idea’s potential. If the inventor’s idea was clever enough to get through that first round, they were invited into the studio to pitch their idea in front of the cameras and the Everyday Edisons judges for a shot at getting onto the show.

I stayed for a few hours sitting just off stage in the studio watching inventors pitch their ideas and found their passion and inventiveness compelling. One person I saw tryout for the show had spent more than $80,000 on his prototype. Another had flown in from Atlanta to show off his invention. Others had gadgest they had pieced together from what looked to be spare parts in their garages and one literally had an idea scrawled on a napkin. Louis told me that no matter how many inventors show up, they always make sure that every person gets a chance to pitch their idea, meaning that the show’s creators often end uup staying from 7AM until well past Midnight to accomodate everyone.

The show will be available to over 340 PBS affiliate stations and will beging airing this weekend (here in San Diego it airs on Sunday the 29th at 12:30PM on KPBS Channel 15) and I highly recommend checking it out if you have the chance.

Have you ever had the urge to take a year off your life to travel, visit exotic places and experience first hand what different cultures from around the world have to offer? That has always been a dream of mine and since my wife also has the travel bug, I’m sure that’s something we’d both love to do at some point. Of course, the next questions that come up are: Where would you go? How would you plan it? How would you pay for it?

Now think of this: What if you had four children ranging in age from 4 to 13? Could you still imagine doing it? Well, that’s the situation that Anne Andrus and her husband Tom were in and they’re currently in month 8 of their round the world trip with their family. They’ve been to Australia and New Zealand, visited floating villages in Vietnam, donated their time to help children in an orphanage in India, hiked the Great Wall in China, rode elephants in Thailand, visited the Angkor temples in Cambodia, camped out all over Southern Africa and saw wild game in its natural habitat, and they’ve gotten to do it all together as a family. Oh, and they were just on Oprah, as well…

Tom and Anne have been detailing their travels on a blog over at www.sixintheworld.com and apparently one of Oprah’s staff came across it and brought it to her attention. It’s well worth checking out, as they have a number of absolutely beautiful pictures, as well as plenty of interesting observations about the countries they’ve been to and people they’ve met in their travels. One of Oprah’s producers contacted Tom and Anne through their site in January and then arranged to shoot the piece via satellite on top of Table Top mountain in Cape Town, South Africa on Wednesday, March 28th. The segment aired just 5 days later on April 2nd. You can check out a clip of the Andrus’ appearance on the show here.

Of course, with Anne being a writer we had already talked about what kind of book may come out of their trip before they left back in August and it’s something we’ve touched base about a few times along the way. But when Oprah calls it’s time to kick your thinking into a whole new gear and once we found out they were confirmed to be on the show, I spent a couple of frantic days calling editors to get them to watch the show. The feedback has been excellent so far and I can’t wait to see how the proposal shapes up when the Andrus family is back home and Anne has had a chance to catch her breath and start working on the proposal.

Just goes to show that sometimes when you follow your dreams, all sorts of things become possible.

Recently I’ve noticed an increase in the number of bloggers contacting me about turning their blogs into a book. Then someone mentioned a post by Gina Trapani over at Lifehacker.com called “How to turn your blog into a book” and it all made sense.

Lifehacker draws millions of visitors a month, so when Gina posted about her experience in working with me to make her book a reality (currently up to #222 overall at Amazon), it’s not surprising that there are many other bloggers who would like to achieve the same kind of success.

As an agent, I love working with authors who have highly trafficked blogs. They’re a fantastic way to overcome the traditional star bias in publishing and prove that people care about what a particular author has to say. In fact, my experience with the power of a massive daily Web readership goes back to 1999 when I represented Illiad over at UserFriendly.org on his first book with O’Reilly. However, since more than a couple of the queries I’ve received have been of the “Here’s a link to my blog. Take a look and let me know what you think” variety, I thought I’d post a few quick tips to help bloggers succeed in generating interest from an agent or editor.

1. Bigger is Better. Simply put, if you want to turn your blog into a book, the more traffic you have the better your chances are. Of course, it certainly helps if your approach to your topic is unique or compelling in some way and it’s a given that the writing will need to be strong, but nothing will draw interest from a publisher more quickly than a large audience. So if only a few hundred or a few thousand people are reading your blog, it may make more sense for you to spend time growing your readership before going after a book deal. If you already have a sizeable readership, be ready to provide some traffic statistics right up front and you’ll find that your chances of drawing interest from an agent or publisher will improve dramatically.
2. Make a Pitch. If you’re approaching an agent or editor (as opposed to them approaching you), don’t just send a link to your blog and expect them to read back through months of posts to figure out if there’s a book there. If you take the time to prepare a few well thought out paragraphs that describe what your blog is about, why it’s unique, what kind of interest it has drawn, and of course, your vision for the book and why it will sell, you’ll be much more successful.
3. Does Your Blog Work as a Book? It’s also important to understand that some blog writing simply doesn’t work well in book form, especially if it features commentary or opinion on time sensitive issues like a news event. From the time you’ve secured a deal with a publisher until the time the book is on shelves will be an absolute minimum of six months and will often be more on the order of a year. That means the material still has to be vital not only when your book hits the shelves, but for at least another year after that. If your blog does happen to be time sensitive, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t write a book. After all, part of having a blog with a substantial amount of traffic is proving that readers care about your point of view. However, it does mean that you may have to spend some time thinking about what your blog is really about (not just the day to day stuff, but the larger themes), what the book should be, and then developing the concept from there, rather than simply porting your blog over into a book.
4. Your Blog is Not a Book (yet). Even if you have a substantial readership, if you’re expecting to dump your blog posts from the last year into a big file and have publishers line up to write you a check, you might be in for a bit of a shock. Even though the material on Lifehacker was almost perfectly suited for compilation into a book, Gina still had to go through 3+ months of writing, re-writing and organizing to turn the material into a top quality book. For most blogs there will be even more work involved in developing the concept and coming up with an outline that makes sense in book form. Of course, you may still be able to use material from your blog, but in many cases you’re likely better served by considering it source material that you can draw from in creating the book rather than as the book itself.

With the New Year, I wanted to send out some congratulations to a few LaunchBooks clients whose books have recently hit the shelves and received a terrific reception.

Gina Trapani’s wonderful book Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day (John Wiley) is #23 on the Computer Books Bestseller List over at Amazon, and is currently ranked #478 there overall.

Second Life: The Official Guide (Sybex), which Wagner James Au contributed to, is #22 on the Computer Books Bestseller List at Amazon, and is ranked #466 there overall.

And finally, Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design (New Riders) by Andy Clarke and edited by Molly Holzschlag is #88 on the Computer Books Bestseller List, and #1,633 overall at Amazon.

Congratulations!

Congratulations(!) go out to Wagner James Au, whose book entitled Notes from the New World about the virtual world Second Life was just acquired by Ethan Friedman over at HarperCollins. You can read the announcement on James’ blog New World Notes.

For those not familiar with Second Life it’s the amazing virtual world where more than a million residents literally live out second lives, spending on average more than 20 hours per week in world. What differentiates Second Life from worlds like World of Warcraft is that it’s actually not a game at all. It has a real, functioning economy where you can exchange Linden Dollars (the world’s currency) for real US currency, and where some residents actually earn six figure incomes from the sale of virtual items. Also, all of the content in SL is created by its residents and they actually own what they create. It’s fascinating stuff and provides a compelling window into the next iteration of the Internet as it moves from a largely static, two dimensional environment into a fully immersive 3D virtual world.

James’ book will not only give readers a glimpse into some of the amazing things happening there, but will also place them in a larger context to give readers a sense of what this will mean for all of us going forward. Definitely stop by James’ blog if you get a chance and click back through some of the posts. If Second Life isn’t something you’re familiar with I guarantee you’ll be blown away by the variety and magnitude of what’s happening there.