Blog Blazers (ISBN 0981085202)

Read this as if you were an eavesdropper:
Stephane Grenier is not a facile writer, but he had a good idea and followed through on it. The concept was to interview 40 "top" bloggers and ask them the same 24 questions. Grenier then published each of the 40 interviews as a standalone chapter. The approach will put off anyone looking for a traditional "how-to" book. But if you approach "Blog Blazers" as if you were eavesdropping on 40 separate conversations between Grenier and a blogger, the approach is suprisingly effective. (As a sidenote, I question whether it is accurate to refer to all 40 of Grenier's subjects as "top" bloggers, but that's a quibble. They are all interesting.) In fact, I think Grenier's book would benefit by charting the different responses by each of the bloggers to Grenier's stock of 24 questions. There is a lot to learn from here. It is not in the form of a textbook, but rather conversations between Grenier and his subjects. Each of them came to blogging through different paths, which is interesting in itself, and a number claim to have reached financial success (i.e., quitting their day job) surprisingly quickly. Grenier's choice of questions is interesting. For example, he asks each a variant of "when did you decide you finally reached success with your blog" and "what makes a blog successful according to you". The responses are quite interesting in their variety. One of the more interesting questions was asking the interviewees which blogs they read regularly. It was surprising to see how many named one particular blog about blogging. Overall, this is an excellent overview of real life bloggers and blogging. Unlike most books, it is not put forth as a "how-to-do-it" text with specific instructions. Instead, the reader gets to essentially eavesdrop on Grenier's interviews with 40 seemingly successful bloggers. It is an interesting approach and works pretty well here. I was suprised to find myself going back to earlier interviews to compare the responses of the interview I was currently reading with earlier ones. The book invites that. This is an unusual book, but if you have an interest in creating what will hopefully be a successful blog in terms of attracting readers and even making money from it, it is well worth reading. Jerry

If you are serious about blogging- you need this book:
OK if you want to really be businesslike about your blog (or your companies blog), this is one meaty little book. If you have no ambitions/questions/ideas about blogging, skip this post. Take my example, I read the book slowly, enjoying the nuggets that each of the bloggers shared. When I finished the book, I had a full day of work ahead to add the first five things to what I was already doing with this blog. My support guy wishes I had never read the book I am sure, since I have another ten things to do next update day. This book reinforced and dramatically increased my utility and usage of Twitter, Stumbledupon and de.lic.ious . I updated my Digg account and picked up that RSS feed to Google Reader - awesome. I have new ideas about trackbacks, retweets and commenting. This book is likely the leadng best practises on blogging repository at the moment. If this is something you care about, you need this book.

A MUST READ FOR PRESENT AND FUTURE BLOGGERS:
When you sit down in front of your computer do you ever feel like everyone in the world has a blog? Everyone that is except for you. (We're told there are more than 70,000,000 blogs on the Internet and a new one comes on line every 1.4 seconds) Perhaps you'd really like to join the throng and write a blog but have no idea how to go about it, too timid, not knowledgeable enough? Here's Stephane Grenier, a recognized expert in web business; he's built and promoted blogs and with the help of 40 friends he shares the secrets of the online trade with you. Please note that those 40 friends are among the world's most successful bloggers. These are folks who aren't surprised to have 500,000 unique visitors per year. A statistic that truly boggles my mind! Some of these bloggers do it to earn money, to personalize a company, to become established as an authority figure, others simply blog because they enjoy it. Whatever the case, it's a big world out there and it would be quite a kick to be a part of it. Much of the advice offered by the top bloggers is common sense, a greater portion falls into the "Why didn't I think of that?" variety. Advice comes under such headings as What's your best tip for writing a successful blog post? What's the most common mistake new bloggers make? (My personal favorite) Which books and websites do you recommend to new bloggers? What's the best way to make money from your blog? All agreed that it takes persistence and patience to garner a good number of hits - each agreed that it was more than worth the effort. Have a look at Blog Blazers - it'll help you decide whether or not blogging's for you. - Gail Cooke

24 Questions, "40" Interviews:
"Blog Blazers" presents 40 of the top bloggers answering a series of 24 questions. Of these 33 are men and 7 are women, most of the topics are computer related or financial. As popular as they are, I had never heard of any of them before so I did some poking around the internet first, looking at 10 random blogs after reading this book. But this review is about this book, not the bloggers themselves. Other reviewers have given this book more stars than me. Yes, everyone provides interesting information. Yes, everyone is honest it seems. But my two star reduction has to do with the organization and presentation of these interviews not with the those interviewed. First, one of the 40 is the author of the book himself. If you want to promote yourself as a successful blogger, great, but it rubs me wrong to have an interview of self in a book. Instead I really wish Grenier had used himself more in the introduction or a conclusion as I'll discuss in a moment and added another "top 40 blogger" to the book. Second, as it is organized, alphabetically by blogger's first name, it feels disorganized. I was hoping for something along the lines of "blogs about X" and "blogs about G" and then maybe a "odd and ends category". One of the reoccurring tips throughout the reviews is to write what you know about so why not organize by subject. Or by success however that will be measured -- money made, number of RSS subscribers, number of comments, whatever. Third, there is a very small introduction and tiny conclusion. Why not pull together some of the most common tips and answers? Why not use the author's own life as a blogger to gauge the answers? What about a list of the references bloggers gave to their questions? As it is I don't feel like I walk away with anything solid about what anyone thinking about blogging seriously needs to consider. Maybe this isn't a "how-to" technically but you know that most folks picking this book up are hoping to learn how-to. Finally, I just found the interview process here to be very repetitive. So I double checked. Yes, the same 24 questions over and over. No differences. Now, of course you want to ask the same foundation questions in an interview when you are comparing folks and gathering tips but where's the engagement between interviewer and blogger? Where are the follow up questions that dig a bit deeper and demand more specifics or more examples? That would have been both entertaining and enlightening. So at the end these tips and suggestions are here, the secrets promised on the book's cover are here, but you, the reader will need to be alert and keep track of them as you read.

+1/2 -- Interesting research reported in repetitious format:
Grenier's interviewed forty bloggers (including himself) and reported the information as forty separate four to eight page chapters. The bloggers include experts in web technology, consumer electronics, software, business, finance, personal improvement and numerous other topics. Each interviewee was asked the same twenty-four questions, covering these basic areas: - What generally makes a blog successful, and what's made your blog successful? - What bloggers do you respect and read? - What blogging resources do you recommend? - What tips can you provide and what pitfalls can you help bloggers avoid? - What marketing/monetization techniques have you found effective? The responses contain some illuminating experience, but their presentation as individual interviews of the same twenty-four questions quickly becomes repetitious. The interview format reads like a transcription of research data rather than an analysis, and with only a short introduction and epilogue, readers are left to synthesize larger truths, patterns or lessons for themselves. Were the interviewees sufficiently famous to be the book's main attraction, or were the interviews made unique with specific follow-up questions, the individual encounters would be more compelling. But given the rote repetition of the same twenty-four questions in each interview, a great deal more value could be derived from reorganizing the reporting by question or question area, interspersing perspectives of multiple bloggers, and drawing conclusions, tips or suggestions across the responses. There's valuable information here for anyone willing to plow through forty separate interviews, but converting that data into knowledge is an exercise left to the reader. 3-1/2 stars, if allowed fractional ratings. (©2009 hyperbolium dot com)