Slee's stuff is consistently quite good. I still haven't read his Walmart book, though - but at least I bought it in a real bookstore when it was new!

The self-assessment is very interesting.

I was a bit shocked by how small his readership appears to be in the aggregate.* But that might be because he's been mentioned a bunch of times at CT, so it seems like more people would have heard of him. On the other hand, I have no idea how many people read the CT bloggers when they post outside of the CT website itself.

*The traffic patterns are less surprising as not many people are going to check a blog every day unless there are posts every day.

His blog gets about the same number of hits as mine. There also appear to be some similarities in our blogging styles (infrequent, long posts, for example). It's interesting that he considers his blog such a failure, whereas I consider mine a pretty satisfying success. Very different goals, clearly. This discussion of blogging from shortly after he started is interesting too.

He seems to have set out trying to have a larger readership. Also, he's often criticizing/commenting on people with huge readerships, many of whom write books that sell a lot, so it probably makes the contrast in readership all the more clear to him.

Yeah, he clearly set out trying to make a big impact (and to promote his book), and ended up as more of a niche player. The subjects he writes on make for one hell of a big pond in the blogosphere, though, so it's not really surprising that he ended up as a small fish, especially since his style is so different from the way most of the big fish operate. That would certainly be a frustrating situation to end up in.

One of the other posters at Mark Kleiman's blog suggested in that comment thread that Slee join a group blog if he wanted to raise his profile, as it would make up for the infrequent posting. I considered offering him a slot at Unfogged, in the off chance that he wanted to both lower his profile and damage his reputation for intellectual seriousness, but figured I shouldn't do it without asking the other front page posters.

5 will get you 10 that he's already talking to Farrell at CT about this.

Oh, he'd be a natural at CT. I was surprised by how few copies of Walmart had sold, until I realized that I have no idea how many copies of a typical non-fiction book sell. But I do now feel as if I own a rare first edition.

2000 copies would be an unexciting but not disastrous sale, unless things have changed massively since my day, which come to think of it they have, what with all this digital stuff. So, would have been a meagre average, now perhaps a healthy average.

I think his appeal is limited by the fact that he doesn't do the kind of breathless bollocks his apparent segment of the blogosphere requires. Frequency of posting and length of posts is also an issue, but I think being grounded and lacking in hyperbolic bullshit really hurts you if you are going for the technology/markets/society segment of the blogosphere. People like that stuff to be all nonlinear open disruption wikiblablabla.

7: you have my approval and if any of the others objects I'll do the necessary.

That poor man would be ruint if he posted here.

13 is Sifu's way of revealing that all along HE was The Editors, I'm sure of it.

I had not read that review of Here Comes Everybody before, but it matches my experience with the book. I enjoyed reading it (and have passed it along to other people) but also found it more interesting as a book to argue with than a book to a nod along with.

I realized why I hadnt read his blog: "small but select group of very smart people who have continued to read this blog."

"Here Comes Everybody' was a disappointment. I like a lot of clay shirkys essays though.

When I have read things by Clay Shirky I have been most impressed by how impressed Clay Shirky is with Clay Shirky.