Robert Scoble reports a big upward blip in sales of Naked Conversations, the business book on blogging he co-authored with Shel Israel:

I was talking with Richard Edelman yesterday (his blog is here) and he told me he bought about 250 copies of my book. “Oh, were you the one who bought from Amazon?” I asked. Wiley had already seen the spike in sales and reported to us that someone had made a big order. Turned out he was. He’s handing them out to all of his senior managers. Who’s Richard Edelman? He runs the world’s biggest PR firm.

At Amazon’s price per book, that’s a small total investment for providing senior colleagues (and perhaps clients) with something that will give them the strategic picture of blogs and blogging, explain their relevance to business and communication, and answer the question: “Why?”

Last week, I wrote a review of Naked Conversations for IABC’s Communication World print magazine.That will be published in an upcoming edition soon. I’m not going to post the review here (wait for the magazine!), but I will post a snippet, the very last paragraph of that review:

The time is right for such a book. It should be required reading for every company.

I’d guess Richard Edelman would agree.

(Related – FIR podcast review of Naked Conversations, 23 November 2005.)