Ditto is a social entertainment guide that compiles lists… and one of those complied lists is titled “Rock Stars of Web 2.0”

The list includes such power players as Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net, Larry Page of Google, Ev Williams of Twitter and Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress.

However, the one individual that leads the list is Clay Shirky, a writer. Well, he’s more than a writer. He writes of himself on his site:

I have been a producer, programmer, professor, designer, author, consultant, sometimes working with people who wanted to create a purely intellectual or aesthetic experience online, sometimes working with people who wanted to use the internet to sell books or batteries or banking.

However, Clay’s most recent accomplishment is that he has written the book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

The fact that a writer would appear as a Web 2.0 Rock Star shouldn’t surprise you. (The fact that he’s Number 1 there should give you a clue as to what he’s writing about.)

What may surprise you is that he launched a blog specifically to promote the book.

Now, you should understand that Clay’s website gets MONSTROUS traffic according to Alexa. He’s definitely leveraged that traffic to promote not only the book but also the blog. But you may be wondering, “Why launch a blog when the website gets so much traffic?”

Clay shares his thinking on the website:

Along with the book, I am launching a Here Comes Everybody blog, designed to both chronicle and extend the themes of the book. I’m delighted to finally have to book out, and to be able to begin blogging about it. In addition, this site collects many of my older writings, from which many of the themes of the book arose.

If one’s good then two are definitely better. Clay’s relatively newly launched blog already has a great Alexa ranking and his book is selling well on Amazon.

Contrast this to my experience of early this morning. I was logged into my Biznik account and trying to find writers for the web to include in my upcoming course “The 8 Week Power Blog Launch” (read more about it at Make My Blog Successful.) I found many writers, but few that had websites let alone blogs.

How, oh how I am going to tell if you can write if you don’t provide any examples?

When I first published my book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results I thought books were Minor Sale transactions.  However, it didn’t take me long to realize that a book buyer expects to form a relationship with the author.  The book buyer anticipates spending valuable time with the author and as a result, even though the cost is minimal, book buying definitely qualifies as a Major Sale.

I quickly discovered that the people who wanted to buy my book were people who already “knew” me.  The way they were “introduced” to me was through my blog.  The could read what I had to say and see if I really knew enough to warrant the investment of time required to read my book.

I wasn’t familiar with Clay Shirky before seeing him top the ditto list.  After perusing his website AND his blog, I’ll probably pick up a copy of his book.

I promise you, I’m not the first or last book buyer to follow that path!

Filed under: Easy Author Book Marketing, For the Writer, Selling Books, Writing as a Business, blog, internet marketing, Selling Books, websites to sell books