First Touch

Something wonderful happened in the Naked Conversations saga at a few minutes before 8 a.m. this morning outside Central Park Parlor A, in the New York, New York Hotel, Las Vegas. Ellen Reavis Gerstein, an incredibly talented senior Wiley marketing honcho presented me with our first two fresh-off-the-presses copies of Naked Conversations. I wandered down the hallway a short distance and found Scoble and handed him his copy.

He studied it for a long moment, admiring its stand out yellow-orange cover (or maybe it's orange-yellow)  He fondled where the two tin cans, tied by string, meander through the last red letters of the title. He thumbed gently accross the 251 pages, stopping and examining randomly. I suspect he was close to misting for just a second, then slowly he beamed like a proud new parent. I realized I had done just about exactly the same thing when Ellen handed me the books a few minutes earlier.

This was a moment we had anticipated for a year.  And now, we were having it. Two hours later, Robert and I addressed a roomful of about 40 people including book buyers from some of the most important book-selling organizations in the world, including Borders and Amazon.com. We were scheduled to follow a really great, upbeat interactive presentation on cming tech trends by Ziff Davis luminary Jim Louderback, another Wiley author. Jim was a tough act to follow, but Robert  and I worked on this one.  We even had hammered ot a script. Then we got up there, we just tossed it aside in favor of having a naked conversation with the audience. It felt like we were very well received. At the break we held our first book-signing session.

When it was over, we found ourselves a bench in a quiet area and just sat and beamed.

It's official.  We're authors now.

Comments

[Raanan Avidor]

Congratulations! May it be a big success (I think it will be).

[Bill Riski]

After much thought and reflection on the long road you've travelled to get to this point, I can only say ...

HU-RAH!

[don Thorson]

Excellent and congratulations !! - "and so it begins". When can we get our hands on one?

[/pd]

This is great accomplishment Shel and Robert !!!

Shel, would you say that its the most memorable minute of your life ?? :)-

[Octavio Isaac Rojas Orduña]

Congrats to you and Robert!!!

[Brian Bailey]

I can't wait to walk through a bookstore and see it on the shelf. You guys have done it right from the beginning and now the fun begins.

Congratulations! Thanks for the ongoing inspiration!

[Robert Scoble]

Shel, I'm so happy!

I just wrote my side of the CES book launch "moment" up here: http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/01/08/cnet-announces-best-of-ces-but-for-me-there-was-another-best/ (includes pictures of our book and of Shel, and links to a podcast we did with John Furrier)

[Paul Marino]

Congrats guys! Having written my first book a bit over a year ago, I can relate to that feeling of having the final published book in your hands (I often tell people that it's the closest a guy will ever come to giving birth).

Again, great work - I'm looking forward to reading my copy soon.

[james governor]

good job shel. must feel great.

[Donna Tocci]

Congratulations! Can't wait to see a copy here on the East Coast soon.

[Evan Erwin]

Wow, congrats guys. It's been amazing to watch blogging explode, and to watch this book come together the entire time.

Bravo!

[paula]

You did it- You never gave up on your dream! Thank you for including me in your process and valuing my opinion (and I don't even blog!) Looking forward to your next book! Paula

[shel israel]

Thanks Paula. For those of you who don't know her, Paula is my wife. I could not have done this project without her support. I would not have wanted to. Now, we need to get her to follow Maryam's lead and get her to start her own blog.