If you’ve spent even a fraction of a second on the internet, you’ve likely stumbled across a Gawker Media blog (check out the full list of them here). Nick Denton’s empire of niche blogs has come as close to conquering the internet as possible.

Which is, presumably, why Gawker Media felt the need to ride the wave of their success and put out a dead-tree edition of industry secrets: The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media.

The Guide is a parody business/self-help-type book, supposedly brimming with secrets that will help any hapless schmo climb and backstab his way to the mountaintop of media mogul…hood. Yeah, mogulhood.

Secrets like:

• Editor rejection letters and what they really mean

• An NPR pledge-drive wishlist (Fresh Air fresheners, Crate+Barrel compost hutch, Sharper Image electronic chin stroker, haw haw)

• What “TK” means in a newsroom lore

• Professional thank-you card ideas (such as “Your wife was all over me at the company picnic. … Thanks for making that possible.”)

And so much more. Except, sadly, the vast majority of the jokes fall flat. They’re not particularly insightful or clever, and the whole tone of the book seems to fall short of Gawker’s trademark witty irreverence.

That’s not to say that the book is without redeeming moments. The listing of magazines and which of them best reflects certain personalities (”People: Do you actually care for celebrities, like do you cry when something bad happens to them?” or “Elle: What’s your absolute bottom line for scented candles? Is it $35/candle?”) is pretty funny.

Gawker’s strength seems to exist most strongly in pixel form (The Shelf Life already covered a book by the author of Gawker sports blog Deadspin). The bar is set pretty high when The Daily Show crew can churn out a textbook parody and have me guffawing at every page. Which, for Gawker, should mean stick to what you know: the interwebs.