Press release of the week

Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot
goes on-sale inside Second Life:
Both In-Game and Real-Life Books Available for Purchase in LindenDollars

In-game versions of Play Money designed by Second Life resident/coder/publisher Falk Bergman are available for 750L$. These copies can be signed by Dibbell at his in-Second Life interview with journalist Wagner James Au on July 27^th (for details see http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2006/07/julian_dibbell_.html). For the Second Life resident who needs something a bit more tactile, 6250L$ buys a real-life copy of Play Money, shipped with care to the buyer’s real life address. This makes Basic Books the first mainstream publisher to accept payment in the currency of an online economy.

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Basically—this means that you can have your online character buy a copy of the book, using the game's currency; for a higher price, you, the person controlling the character, can use the game's currency to buy an actual, paper-and-glue copy.

I just reviewed this book for the Voice. The first half or so is completely gripping—I was raving about parts of it to everyone I met that weekend—but then the book gets taken over by . . . blog entries. One could explore this more: How the blog voice—even that of a good bloggger—isn't something most people would care to read between hard covers.