Yes, this book was in response to something we were featuring at BlogHer. WAAAAAY back in July of 2008. Maybe you remember it, but maybe you don’t. Can’t blame ya! I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

Anyhow, the goal of the challenge was to connect with the bloggers at the conference and offer them something of value. When I attended in 2007, I heard a lot of people talking about resolutions to try new things, taking on new challenges, and “improving” themselves. I put improving in quotes, because I think that’s a subjective thing - most people I met needed little improvement.

So Wiley folks attending BH talked about ways to help people do that, engage the blogging community with something fun, and help get the word out about our site relaunch. Hence, the Dummies challenge was born.

I sure took my sweet time getting these books out to people! I totally take responsibility for that, but my delay enabled us to tie the challenge books into the new Dummies.com launch, and that happened later than I thought it would. Regardless, the new site is up, and it’s such an improvement over what we originally had. Traffic is good, and feedback has been positive.

Thanks for your advice. As I’m sure you tell your readers, when you reach out to bloggers, you have to have your ducks all in a row, and be prepared to hear lots of feedback, and not all of it good. I appreciate your talking about the promotion, and certainly don’t mind if people contact me directly to ask questions about it or try to take the challenge themselves. You list my twitter ID, which is the best way to reach me, or thru my email which is egerstein at wiley dot com (bot spammers be dammed!).

Thanks again,
Ellne