Blog Books: 3×3

One if by link. Katie Paine reviewed three books on blogging, and did so well. Shel Israel linked to her review. I’ll link to each book’s web site.

• Naked Conversations, by Shel and Scoble, see above link to Shel’s site.
• The Corporate Blogging Book, by Debbie Weil.
• Dispatches From Blogistan, by Susan Stefanac.

Two if by rhyme. Let’s get mousy with it, using the structure of “Three Blind Mice” and the order of books from the above list.

Three blog books, three blog books,
What do you need?
Let’s see how they read:
The first tends to evangelize,
The second answers how and whys,
The third isn’t just for business eyes.
Three blog books.

Three if bibliolescencent. Bibliolescence is a term I coined for a book becoming obsolete. The first and second prizes for raising this concern about blogging books go to Dispatches. It would be easy to mock the book now for having a “social networks on the rise” chapter that doesn’t mention Facebook. But the foreword, by David Perlmutter, addresses the “why a book about blogs” question, and the “books are too slow” charge, rather well.

Each of the books earns its current keep. Conversations evangelizes about corporate blogging, and the gospel still bears preaching. Corporate borders on “for dummies” territory, and not in a bad way.

Dispatches is the outlier among the three, given that it’s more general and less corporate than the other two, and that it was published in 2007, rather than in 2006. I particularly like the five “blogs as” chapters, in which blogs are discussed as linkfests, diaries, clubhouses, newrooms, and then soapboxes.

So we have three good books on blogging here. This 3×3 post, together with Katie’s rather more timely review, should give you an idea of which of the books would serve you best.