Yes, Some People Actually Bought the Huffpo Book

Are there some people out there who automatically buy any book they see promoted on The Daily Show?

That's the best explanation I can think of for the surprisingly non-infinitesimal sales of The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging. Since it went on sale Dec. 2, the title has sold 6,012 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan. Factor in sales not recorded by BookScan and the title has probably sold more like 8,500 copies, at a pre-discount price of $15 a piece.

As web-to-book crossovers go, that's closer to the sales of a modest success like Stuff White People Like than to a complete flop like The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media. But it hasn't been good enough to get The Huffington Post Complete Guide onto the New York Times paperback advice best-sellers list, where another blog-to-print title, I Can Has Cheezburger?, is currently No. 4.

Why would anyone pay a dime to read professionals' advice on breaking into an amateur medium that rewards people who make up their own rules? Here's how Arianna Huffington -- a person who uses the term "blog" as a synonym for "blog post," and whose website may be worth anywhere from $2 million to $200 million -- describes the book today in an interview with I Want Media:

It's an A-to-Z guide on blogging that has something for everyone, from the tech-challenged newbie looking to get a handle on this new way of communicating to experienced bloggers looking to take their work to the next level.

In the three-and-half years since HuffPost launched, we've learned a lot about what does and doesn't work when it comes to blogging. We've gathered it all together in this book, together with some terrific examples from some of our great bloggers like Larry David, Nora Ephron, Bill Maher, Alec Baldwin and Erica Jong.