I'm back

I have some good news for you

The publisher of my book “The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing” wants a second edition. But that's not the good news for you. This time, they have agreed to let me use word-of-mouth marketing techniques to create and sell the book.

What this means to you is that I will be writing substantive revisions of the book as essays on this blog. I promise you that they will go way beyond what has been written on the subject so far.

In addition, I will be writing my new book, currently untitled, also on the blog. The premise of the book is that there is only one thing that marketers have to do to be successful, only one thing that organizes and forces you to do all of the other right things: help customers make the right decisions faster.

I will be doing all of this is a series of blog posts. That's one of the great things about blogging. I can write things as they occur to me, the way I usually do, and you can get the benefit without my having to worry about all of them hanging together, until the book is published.

You can also participate by making comments. We can refine and tune the ideas together, making for a much better book. You can use the ideas now, rather than waiting a year or two until official publication.

That's what's so wonderful about the New Marketing. Its participatory nature drives up the quality, while letting people get the benefits during the development process, or at least ensure that the eventual product is more suited to their needs.

This is like beta testing a new piece of software. I've recently been a beta tester for OmniFocus,  a spectacular new piece of software designed to keep track of projects and activities using the GTD system. I was struck by the extreme degree of cooperation between the developers and the beta testers. I'm experiencing another even greater example of that by beta testing another piece of software that has turned me around from what would have been an extreme skeptic, spreading negative word of the word of mouth, into a wild evangelist about the greatest piece of computer software ever developed. It's going to provide a spectacular example, once I can talk about it, hopefully in a week or two.

From time to time, I will organize the blog posts into essays and e-books or papers.

Before the book is published, I have permission to distribute it as a free e-book. We'll probably keep distributing it as a free, or very low cost e-book, even after publication.

It has been intensely frustrating to have to use conventional marketing and be precluded by contract from using my own principles.

In fact, it became so unbearable that when my publisher asked me to come up with a second addition I immediately came to the conclusion that I would do it on my own terms: either the publisher would have to agree to what conventional publishers just don't agree to, or I would write a completely new book and publish it myself. My agent said that there was no way a publisher would agree to publishing a book on the blog as it was being written, and giving it away as an e-book, other examples like Seth Godin and Bob Garfield notwithstanding.

About 10 minutes into the conversation, the publisher (I'm leaving out the details here until I get permission to use his name) agreed. Turns out, he was totally informed about what is going on in publishing today, and was eager to try this new approach. He just couldn't get an author who wanted to give away his own books. My agent and I practically had to be picked up off the floor. In fact, I actually said to the publisher, “I can't believe you're not giving me more of a fight here, how come?” He basically said that he knows where things are going and wants to try the new marketing, and why not with one of the leaders of the new marketing?

Anyway, it's going to be a blast.

Pass the word.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, WOMM, Word-of-mouth marketing

Comments

[gl hoffman]

Good Luck, George, with your new book. I am sure it will be a success. Your publisher sounds like he might be just the right person to help you too.