Richard Bailey, who writes the public relations education blog “Behind the Spin,” puts Mediactive at the top of his “books of the year” — what he considers the “five best books about – or of value for – public relations students and practitioners published in 2010″ — saying (among other things):

[the book's ideas] apply to all media consumers and media content creators (ie to all of us) and core concepts such as trust and transparency are central to public relations practice.

Here’s his full review.

Micah Sifry, author and co-founder of TechPresident and the Personal Democracy Forum (and a friend), calls Mediactive “a gem” and says: “Read it if you want to know how to be a fully informed participant in the new media age.”

Thanks!

The Mediactive book is now available on the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader. You can also get Nook apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and other platforms.

Josh Stearns is a program director at Free Press, a media advocacy organization. In a lengthy review, he calls Mediactive “a handbook for engaged media citizenship.” I may borrow that line…

In the three days since Mediactive was published here in PDF format, about 1,500 visitors here have downloaded the book, and many more have visited the Table of Contents, which connects to the HTML version. Far fewer have purchased the book, of course, but it’s selling — and I’ve barely begun the real marketing process, which will take place in the new year.

The World Bank’s Johanna Martinsson, communication associate in the institution’s Communication for Governance & Accountability Program, has a long blog post today about the need for a mediactive culture. She calls the book

a great source for everyone, and it will make you think twice next time you read or write something (because Gillmor suggests that in a participatory culture, we ought to do both to become fully literate).  With the current state of media (and no doubt it’s going to continue to evolve and diversify), we can no longer afford to take a back-seat and be passive consumers of information.  If we do, we run the risk of being misguided and form opinions that are not based on fact.

BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow has written a wonderful blog post about the book. He calls it a “master class in media literacy for the 21st century” and

an extraordinary text that disrupts the current poor-me narrative of failing journalistic business models and counters it with a set of sensible, entrepreneurial proposals for an Internet era news-media that invites broad participation without surrendering critical thinking and healthy skepticism.

Cory, a longtime friend, is one of the real heroes in the ongoing struggle to keep cyberspace open and innovative. He’s also a fabulous writer. I’m grateful for his support of this project.

I’m happy to say that Mediactive, the book, is now available in print (Amazon and Lulu) and in a Kindle edition.

And because this project lives under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, I’ve also published it in full on this site. In addition, you can download it here as a PDF.

This is only the beginning. I’m working on an epub edition to use with other online services, and will be creating a variety of e-book editions that include other kinds of media. Beyond that, I intend Mediactive to be an ongoing, iterative process — with updates here on the website and, eventually new versions of the book itself.

Lots of people have helped me get this far on the journey. I thank you all, and look forward to the next steps.