D-day minus 4 at #bookofblogs HQ

It's been a whirlwind summer, full of sport, sunshine, a bit of rain (at least here in the UK) and I hope you've had some memorable holidays... In amongst all that something pretty special has been happening at the #bookofblogs HQ. Over the last nine weeks researchers, practitioners, academics and bloggers have been penning their thoughts on the use of social media for research and sharing them with us.

Back in June when I wrote sometimes you have to 'just do it' and lobbed the idea of a crowd-sourced book of blogs into the Twittersphere, it wasn't without a fair bit of trepidation. Would anyone respond? What would people write about? Would we reach beyond existing bloggers and network members.

You know what, people (yes that's you!) really did respond. We've now got 40 uploaded blogs, just ten short of our target and whilst we've lost a few authors along the way (we'll miss you), we've gained others. And in keeping with our goal 'you write it & we'll publish it' the book is light on editing but packed full of fascinating insights, how to's, how not to's, opinion pieces, perspectives and personal journeys. We've got well respected academics, bloggers and first time writers rubbing shoulders with one another each bringing different perspectives & insights for us all to learn from.

It's been a brilliant effort. Thank you.

We're entering the final stages for contributions, there's a tiny clutch of blogs to arrive yet, just let us know if you need help uploading we so want to hit that 50 blog target. You can see the sheer diversity & richness of the contributions to date from this rough index:

So what's next? It's a final but crucial lap.  We're doing some organisation of the book into themes, checking it works as an ebook on different devices and then we'll be gearing up for launch. We're really hoping that we can have a proper launch party so we'll keep you posted on that but right now we need each of you to think how you can help publicise the book in the run up to launch.

Please keep watching and keep sharing, tell others about the book, let them know it's coming to an digital reader near them soon :) tweet, blog or carrier pigeon about it but please, please help us get the word out. We'll help you by providing some visual hooks and glimpses of content in the run up to the launch in late September, early October.

You've built it and now we want it to fly off the virtual bookshelf...