Here’s a link to the full story in Wired Magazine: Daemon

By courting bloggers and influential techies like Joi Ito, Stewart Brand, and Craig Newmark — demonstrating that if you can get the geek grapevine on your side, you don’t need Random House.

Lesson: Figure out a way to get your book in front of an audience that gets it.

Blogging can be thought of as a continuous conversation of sorts, a conversation that propagates throughout the Internet by word of mouth in the form of links or emails between interested readers. What separates it from the static web pages we’re used to seeing, is an informal, more intimate exchange of dialog that creates a sense of community – only this community isn’t simply one website, but an amalgamation of several linked together as lists of links to other blogs. These lists are called blogrolls, and are the life-blood of the successful blog. But you can actually think of them as recommendations.

Link by cherished link, some bloggers have developed readerships numbering in the millions – becoming celebrities of sorts within the blogosphere, and even transcending the Internet into mainstream media. But the more obscure niches are finding an audience as well – which is the real power of blogs, and a source of optimism for the modern day author-entrepreneur.

It’s possible for a successful book to never see the light of day in a brick-and-mortar bookstore.

Combined with print-on-demand and/or eBook technology, it’s now possible to write, edit, design, print, market, and distribute a book entirely electronically – completely on a do-it-yourself basis. Any of the technical steps you don’t care to tackle can be outsourced to the burgeoning number of freelance professionals online. Your book can readily incorporate the production values normally associated with name-brand publishers, and rival in quality most of what can be found on the shelves at your local Barnes & Noble.