I consider the Technorati bomb experiment a success, but there is now a blogger who thinks I am an idiot or perhaps a scumbag for doing this. He left some feedback in the original post on the subject, to which I have responded. He also criticizes the whole thing in his weblog (her? I'm not familiar with the gender of "Taran" so forgive me if I picked wrong.) I can kind of understand the criticism, as the mechanism had a certain cynicism to it. I think Doc might have slightly hurt the cause a little by referring to Clevenger as "my friend", which makes it sound like I'm just logrolling for some buddy of mine. For the record, that's not the case. I don't know the guy at all, this is all about the book. Which also for the record, I think is one of the best crafted and most compelling books I've read in a long time. It still haunts me months after I finished it. I wouldn't do this for just anything. Also for the record, I have dozens of friends and acquaintances who are writers and I've never done something like this for any of them and probably never will. I talked up Kelley Eskridge's Solitaire quite a bit here but I didn't organize a campaign like this. I actually felt a little guilty about that over the weekend, considering that I don't know Clevenger but I love Kelley to pieces, and yet I'm doing this for his book and not hers.

The thing I regret now is that Doc is getting heat over this. He was commenting on an interesting phenomenon, mainly me trying to organize these, and also contributed by commenting on it with a link. Now he's getting static for that. It's a shame, because I was tickled pink when Doc got involved. He didn't do anything wrong, and if you want blame to place it is all on me. It was my idea, I organized and executed it. Direct all criticisms here. Of course he commented on it, this is exactly the kind of thing he talks about. He could have not used the Amazon link, but why not join in the festivities. What would really make me happy is if Doc decided to buy the book because of this brouhaha and loves it (99.9% chance of that happening) and then blogs about it again from the perspective of an enthused reader. It's that whole "super sneezer" viral thing.

I did email Clevenger (again, he's not my friend just a writer I admire) and tell him I was doing this on his behalf. He said he was quite moved by it, and had noticed his spike in Amazon sales but had no idea why it was happening. I'm now done with the whole thing and will let it naturally fade away, other than answering criticisms and dealing with people who think I'm a scumbag. I'm glad I did it, I'm glad some folks will read the book who never would have heard of it otherwise, and I'm quite convinced they'll be pushing it on their friends, just like I had it pushed on me by my friends and I push it on mine. It's not an ordinary book, it is fabulous and terribly underpromoted by the publishers.

Thanks to those who helped, sorry to those who think I'm a dick, peace to all everywhere. Bring the noise.