At a time when the bestseller lists are loaded with entries from only America's largest houses, when millions will soon be paid for Valerie Plame's memoir and Little, Brown mourns the half-mill it spent on a bad, very bad Harvard student, a tiny book from a heretofore nonexistent publishing house suddenly becomes the highest-ranking title on Amazon.com for three straight days.
How did a San Francisco–based do-gooder telecom organization—20-year-old Working Assets is primarily a wireless and credit card company that has donated millions to what cofounder and CEO Laura Scher describes as "progressive" causes, such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Planned Parenthood—suddenly find itself in the book business? First, it hired editorial director Jennifer Nix "to find ways to bring the progressive message into larger media." She immediately contacted Greenwald, who'd recently given up his day job as a lawyer to blog full time on glenngreenwald.blogspot. He agreed to write a book for a small advance in a short time. Patriot was finished in April and sent out to a printer (Donnelley, which Working Assets had used to print some of its phone bills and flyers); while still in conversations with PGW about distribution, Nix got an ISBN number and then submitted the book to Amazon. For promotion, she relied on Greenwald's popular blog and "about five or six" other bloggers to spread the word. Obviously, they managed to do so.
I don't have much to add, I just want to make sure I know where this article is...should I need it in the future...
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