What's in Blogging Heroes and On the Way to the Web?

Sales of my two most recent titles appeara to be on the upswing after dipping for several weeks. I think quite a few people are discovering Blogging Heroes on their own, separate from mention on blogs and in reviews--which is to say that I see no driving force behind sales at the moment. I believe it's doing well as a Kindle title, too.

Reviews of On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders have yet to appear, except at Amazon. The most recent review, by Joe Enos, tells me that I'm reaching those who are newer to the online world. Among other things, Joe says:

"My own personal experience with online services began in the mid 90's, so I missed out on quite a bit of the excitement. I used Prodigy, and had heard of America Online and CompuServe, but really didn't understand the events leading up to the information superhighway. My goal in reading this book was to understand some of the things I missed out on, and to get a better picture of how the web really got started."

Those who were online in the 1980s likewise find the book of interest, as this excerpt from a review by Thomas Duff ("Duffbert") shows:

"It's far too easy to forget exactly what led us up to the place we are today when it comes to instantaneous communication via the web. This was a book I thoroughly enjoyed, and it brought back fond memories of my initial fascination with online activities."

The title of course doesn't tell you that the book includes histories of CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy, GEnie and all the other consumer online services--plus info and email services like Dialog and Dialmail and Telemail. But it's impossible to pack all that info into a title or subtitle, so my hope is that people infer the fact that the book is a complete history of the online world from the title. It includes the consumer and commercial online services because they were, for all practical purposes, they were the Internet in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. If that doesn't make sense, read the book to see what I'm talking about.
--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com/