At the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference earlier this month, Matt Webb, one of the authors of Mind Hacks, which I wrote about in my blog Writer's Edge last month, told me that whenever the book is mentioned on the blog Boing Boing, they see a spike in sales at Amazon. That's "buzz" in action. One of the co-editors of Boing Boing, sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow, offered an even more thought-provoking idea: he said that giving away his novels via ebooks increases sales of the hard copies. You can read more about Doctorow and his novel notions on his website, craphound.com.

Another author of best-selling technical books, Kathy Sierra, said writers should not worry about their publishers' dwindling advertising budgets: "The good folks on the net will take care of that for you, assuming you're keeping up the conversation." She's the instigater of the O'Reilly "Head First" series of technical books. Her latest creation is the new edition of Head First Java.