Science fiction author John Scalzi began writing the Whatever blog in 1998, posting about a wide variety of topics including the core themes of politics, writing, and science fiction, which helped him accrue an audience of roughly 40,000 daily readers over the course of a decade. In 2002, Scalzi serialized a novel, Old Man?s War, on his website and got the attention of Patrick Nielsen Hayden, a senior editor at Tor Books?which, starting in 2005, published that book, three sequels, and another novel over a three-year period, with yet another book on the way for 2009. Publishing industry observer Ron Hogan will interview Scalzi and Nielsen Hayden about, among other topics: the role of Whatever in building up a fan base for Scalzi?s fiction the online community that emerged from that fan base how to nurture such a community?and how lightly to hold the leash the model Scalzi?s success offered for the creation of Tor.com using free ebooks to promote authors and publishing imprints Less