Big Spike for The Big Switch

Tim O'Reilly has noted a sudden surge in sales of The Big Switch, Nick Carr's book about the emergence of utility computing and its impact on Internet life and enterprise IT. Tim writes:

Chris Anderson, the author of The Long Tail, wonders in the comments if the jump might be due to a single big buy for a conference. Interest in Nick's writing have been helped by two recent posts about Microsoft's web apps and data center strategies. But those didn't appear until March 1-2. What explains the pop in sales starting the week of Feb. 24? In following the blog links, I came across a piece of interesting timing.

On Feb. 25, Aaron Wall published an extended interview with Nick at his SEO Book blog. Aaron is influential among affiliate marketers, many of whom have been enriched by search optimization tips from SEO Book. Many affiliate marketers focus on selling through their e-mail lists, which wouldn't leave a lot of footprints in the blogosphere. That could account for a few of those sales.

Whatever the specific channel, the sales of Carr's book are another sign that cloud computing is hot. We're likely to hear much more about it in coming months.