Book tops charts before it's published

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Several bloggers have cranked out books, but a first-time San Francisco publisher, with assistance from liberal bloggers, helped push one from obscurity to the No. 1 spot on Amazon's best-seller charts in a day -- even before advance copies were printed.

Written by lawyer-turned-blogger Glenn Greenwald, the rise of "How Would a Patriot Act: Defending America from a President Run Amok" is a San Francisco-forged tale of new media leading the old, in which a video created to accompany the book was out before the bound copies, and the video's circulation turned out to be more valuable than kudos from book critics.

There's been no advertising for "How Would a Patriot Act." Didn't need any. It was more important to get love from a handful of key bloggers, who plugged the 144-page book on their sites, leading to a virtually overnight advance sales bump this week -- and a second printing of 20,000 copies. "Patriot" remained at the peak of the Amazon charts for days.

The amazing power of An Army of Davids.