The Network Effect – Part Two

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that yesterday I recommended buying Lars Brownworth’s new book, Lost To The West. You also ( hopefully ) have read my first post about The Network Effect as well.

Lars is the brother of Anders, whom I mention here with some amount of regularity. Yesterday was the release of Lars’ new book for worldwide distribution, and is a tremendous testament to two things: Doing what you love and building a loyal following.

I first heard about Lars when I started working with Anders at Bandwidth.com. At that time, he was a teacher at Stony Brook School in NY. Lars started building a following when he started his podcast, The 12 Byzantine Rulers. A pretty dry subject, one would think. But, if you have ever listened to them, you know that he did a tremendous job of bringing these ancient rulers to life. His passion was infectious to say the least.

Over the course of a few years, Lars built enough of a listener base to have his podcast ranked #1 at one time on Itunes. He had professors at major universities recommending it, and momentum started to build.

It was at this point that the publishers came calling. One thing led to another, and yesterday his book was published by Crown Publishing.

Lars is contemplating what’s next, and I think there will be some other really cool stuff come of his initial efforts around the 12 rulers podcast. But, I think the best thing about all of this is that he was just sharing with the world a subject that he loves to talk about, and enough people cared about it to get him a book deal, as well as other opportunities yet to be determined.

Great story.