Daily Kos Review is in

Here it is: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/4/18/857573/-Book-review-interview:-The-Blueprint

Show me another book that’s been lauded by DailyKos and by RedState. Not sure there’s a political book today that can claim that.

Saturday, April 17

So, we’re going to be featured on DailyKos tomorrow: http://dailykos.com/ and we think we’re going to get a good review. Ok, we know we’re going to get a good review since the reviewer of the book said on a chat yesterday that “he liked the book.”

Has there been a political book in the last ten years that’s been complimented on the front pages of redstate.com and dailykos.com? We’re pretty psyched about that. We knew all along people would react strongly to the story, but didn’t want to share it in a way that pre-judged it for them. Tell the facts, share the anecdotes and hear from the people involved. That’s the key to good journalism and I’d argue the only reason we’re being complimented on those two sites, who I’m sure have agreed on anything else period in recent memory.

Rob did Mike Rosen’s show yesterday: http://www.850koa.com/podcast/shows_rosen.xml 

We both did Caplis and Silverman’s show yesterday even though Dan wasn’t there:  http://www.khow.com/cc-common/podcast/single_podcast.html?podcast=fullshows_capsil.xml

We’re expecting a review here in Colorado tomorrow from the west slope paper, the Grand Junction Sentinel. http://www.gjsentinel.com/

Have a great weekend everyone.

Time to make the donuts

This whole week’s been a blur for Rob and I, in a wonderful way. No one’s complaining as we’ve been fortunate to get the kind of attention we’ve received, yet there is an element of Yogi Berra’s deja vu all over again when you get asked similar questions from a number of different people and at different venues. It’s like the old Dunkin’ Donuts (miss those out here in Colorado) commercial where the guy wakes up super early to make the donuts only to see himself coming back to bed and saying, “I already made the donuts.”

Anyhow, we finished up our Powell’s blogs this week. They were really terrific to let us do it. If you have any question what our story is about, we hope our five-part blog tees it up nicely… You can find it here: www.powells.com/blog

Rob posted a piece to Huffington Post and it’s on the front page of their Politics section. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-witwer/colorado-a-blueprint-for_b_538337.html

We’ve had a couple events this week already. Rob talked to Mike  Rosen this morning. The two of us will speak to Craig Silverman this afternoon.

All in all, a great first week. Thanks everybody.

Day 3

We’ve been trying to balance life, work and now a book that yesterday went as high as #222 on the Amazon best sellers list, ahead of Mitt Romney’s book and ahead of Jesse Ventura’s book, both of whom were former guests on YOUR SHOW by the way. Hopefully, they’ll come back on now. If you can’t buy a copy of the book at your local bookstore, chart our Amazon progress here: http://www.amazon.com/Blueprint-Democrats-Colorado-Republicans-Everywhere/dp/1936218003

Yesterday’s spike in attention came from a front-page placement on the influential conservative blog, redstate.com. The RedState founder Erick Erickson called the book a “must read” and Ned Ryun, the head of a group called American Majority gave it a glowing recommendation: http://www.redstate.com/nedryun/2010/04/14/the-blueprint-how-the-democrats-won-colorado-and-why-republicans-everywhere-should-care/

I spent part of my morning doing my first talk radio segment on the book. I spoke with Jim Pfaff of the Jim Pfaff Show and you can see how I did here: http://www.opiniontimes.com/progressive-democrats/

We’ve been blogging all week at one of the great independent bookstores in America, Powell’s out of Portland. We’ve related this story to Aesop’s Fables, former Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. How is that possible. Look here to find out: www.powells.com/blog

We’re expecting to be on Huffington Post today, so we’ll see how much distance we put between us and Romney and Ventura.

Have a great day.

And we’re off

So Day 2 of our journey was full of positives as well.

At one point, we hit #756 on the Amazon.com best sellers list and actually started to think about what it would take to get into the top ten. Apparently, Amazon guards its algorithms very closely as one time an author or a publisher decided to game the system and buy a whole lot of one particular book to get higher in the rankings. Alas, we’re poor, struggling authors and instead of buying 1,000 copies of our own book off Amazon, we just decided to encourage others to do the same.

Gov. Bill Ritter (D-Colorado) finished the book and gave us a wonderful recommendation. Here it is: “This book does a great job dissecting one of the most significant shifts in Colorado’s political history. Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer chronicle not just the recent transformation of Colorado’s political landscape, but they tell the fascinating story — from an insider’s vantage point — of the people, personalities and varied interests that were at the heart of it. It’s a tale replete with valuable lessons the rest of the nation would be wise to heed.”

We also continued to get good national reviews and attention. Our friend, Sandra Fish, former Capitol reporter and now University of Colorado journalism instructor is also a contributor to the on-line publication, Politics Daily and she reviewed the book here: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/13/colorado-democrats-2008-blueprint-faces-2010-campaign-test

We got a mention on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire which is huge. You can find that link here: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/04/14/how_colorado_went_from_red_to_blue.html

We continued our blogging on the website of Powell’s bookstore, the great independent seller out of Portland that has a mailing list of hundreds of thousands of people. I got to tell the Aesop fable about the ant and the grasshopper which my father always posed to his law school students. What does that have to do with politics and “The Blueprint?” Well, log on here to find out: http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=17887

One other astute analysis of what we’re trying to do has come from University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket. You can find his thoughts on the book here: http://enikrising.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-party-model.html

Have a great day everyone.