I have a file sitting on my desktop. If it wasn’t electronic, it would be bursting at the seams from all the ebooks in it. Out of the thousands of ebooks I have saved, though, a few truly standout. I’ve noticed that all of the PDFs with Chris Brogan‘s name attached fall into that category.

Trust Economies: Investigating the New ROI of the Web is older, as ebooks go. Its authors, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, made the ebook available in March, 2008. A year old! Practically ancient in these fast-moving times!

But Trust Economies has held up. Both the content and the design have aged well and it’s worth a read if you’re doing much of anything online.

The Content

Brogan and Smith produced this ebook as a manifesto of sorts, providing a ten-page snapshot of the concept of the trust economy — attention as currency. Reading through Trust Economies, the structure does point towards a blogging background for both of the writers: shorter paragraphs and personalized statements are found throughout.

The truth is that your attention is on this manifesto, your email, possibly the fight with your wife this morning, and how you were cut off during rush hour right before work.

There is a reason that bloggers like such a familiar touch. It makes connecting with a reader easier. It’s an effective technique, and I think Brogan and Smith made it work just as well in the ebook format as they both do in their blogs. They took a business topic and made it a little easier to relate to for its readers.

We aren’t necessarily talking about introductory level material here. While the language isn’t particularly complicated, there is a basic understanding of social media necessary to truly make use of the ebook. That’s not unreasonable, considering that both Smith and Brogan are step beyond social networking 101. Their respective audiences (and the audience of this ebook) expect something a little more advanced.

The Design

While the content of Trust Economies is pure Brogan and Smith, the ebook actually came out through ChangeThis. When it comes to ChangeThis’ design aesthetic, I admit to a bit of fan girl behavior.

The designs involve bright colors, interesting photography and a crisp style that I think is missing from the average ebook. It’s clear that ChangeThis is familiar with the ebook format and knows how to make it work. I’ll give them extra points for orienting their PDFs horizontally — in my opinion, a single page should fit on a screen without scrolling. It should also be legible without zooming in. Just because a print book is oriented vertically doesn’t mean that the rest of the world needs to follow along.

Download the Ebook

Trust Economies is available as a free PDF from ChangeThis. I’d also heartily recommend browsing through the site’s other publications.