Arianna Huffington from www.ihavenet.com

Three years ago The Huffington Post, barely out of its incubator, was brushed off as a casual, digital hobby of Arianna Huffington.

By February 2010 The Huffington Post had 3.7 million unique visitors (Nielson Online). Technorati, the premiere blog search tool, has the Huffington Post as the second most linked to blog, second to TechCrunch.

The Huffington Post (The HuffPost in the colloquial) combines American “pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps” and “Horatio Alger entrepreneurship” with the ability to brand itself as “The Online Commentator”. So why is The Huffington Post, long on government administration critique, important to the publishing industry?

In part, the answer is The Huffington Post is redefining its role in the world as the “Internet Newspaper”, including various new fields, along with books.

As she is quoted by the New York Times, “when the posts are linked on the front page, the site provides a megaphone and gives authors some prominence. ‘We’ve been very successful in selling people’s books.’”

Take a look at the Huffington Post Book Review Roundup. Even using the conservative estimate of 10,000 viewers, a book reviewed on The Huffington Post is going to do very well.

As more and more people go to online blogs for information, Twitter for breaking news, and Facebook for recreation, The Huffington Post, avante guard of the publishing world, sets the new direction for any kind of information. Publishers, in the throws of electronic rights, in freefall as the traditional publishing world disintegrates, must pay careful attention to any innovation – especially one that is so successful.