deeep breath

Ohhhhh-kay. A quick look back at an interesting year:

January 20, 2007

• ParentingBeyondBelief.com is launched.
• Phrase “Parenting Beyond Belief” gets 7 Google hits at start of month, 350 at end of month.

February 14

• PBB Discussion Forum opens for business with four members.
• Phrase “Parenting Beyond Belief” gets over 9,000 Google hits.

March 25

• The Meming of Life blog goes online.

April 9

• Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion is released.
• PBB.com logs 7991 visitors in April.

May

• PBB is #4 Parenting Reference on Amazon.com
• Phrase “Parenting Beyond Belief” Googles at 24,000. (See current.)

June

• PBB reaches highest rank yet on Amazon (#721 out of 4.5 million) after a single feature story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
• PBB selected for Harvard course.
• PBB.com logs 16,500 visitors in June.

July

• McGowan family moves from beloved Minnesota home of 13 years to Atlanta.
• Newsweek story shoots Amazon rank to #365 overall and to #1 in all subcategories.
• Ten days later, Amazon is cleaned out. Book vanishes from face of Earth. Ill-fated blog satire.
• PBB.com logs 18,029 visitors in July.

August

• A quiet month in Lake Wobegon. Scratched self in itchy place.

September

• PBB secular parenting panel at Atheist Alliance Convention in Washington DC.

October

• Cover story in L’actualite shoots PBB to top of Amazon Canada. Catholic Quebecois go ballistic.
• PBB.com logs 22,300 visitors in October.

November

• Contract signed for second book in PBB series.

December

• PBB is Book of the Month on Secular Web
• Interviews with Positive Parenting, Associated Press, Religion News Service, and Air America’s State of Belief.
• gVisit installed. Blog visitors in three weeks from 49 states (damn you, Delaware!) and 23 countries on six continents (bite me, Antarctica!)
• PBB.com records 150,000th visitor for the year.

January 2008
• As of this morning (14 Jan), after nine months, PBB is still the #1 Parenting Reference, #1 in Parenting Education, and #2 in Morals & Responsibility on Amazon, and still ranks in the top one-tenth of one percent of all books.
• Preparations underway for the PBB Online Book Club (starting Jan 27), PBB Webinars (starting Feb 17) and the PBB traveling seminars. Current plans include Washington DC (Feb 9-11) Minneapolis (March 1), Raleigh (March 15), St. Louis, Amherst NY (May 9), Palo Alto CA, and Atlanta, with more to come.
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Things are getting exceedingly busy now as I test out the possibility of making secular parenting education my full time day job. And there’s the rub. Between the webinars, the seminars, working on the second book, and the raising of the family, I’m going to have to slow down a bit on the Meming of Life. Just a bit. The blogging pace to this point has been extremely useful to me. Scattered among the 132 posts are dozens of ideas that will be in the second book, and one post has actually given me an idea for another book, for which I’m now writing a proposal. I hope you can see why I need to free up some hours.

We’ll be stretching out both the Bookin’ through the Bible series and Laughing Matters, and the overall posting rate will drop to about twice a week, usually Mondays and Thursdays. Thank you both for continuing to read and comment. I really do appreciate it.

(Watch for the next installment of Bookin’ through the Bible shortly — a special guest blogger on Exodus.)