Active Garage

Apr

12

Olivier Blanchard, Author of Social Media ROI: Time Management Tips & More (#3)

In this final installment of my interview with Olivier Blanchard, author of Social Media ROI, we talk about discoverability, time management, and why the best books don’t always get the visibility they deserve.

Liz: Olivier, we were talking earlier about the marketing and promotion of your book. What more do you feel you could have done (or could still do) to boost its “discoverability?”

A glowing review in the Wall Street Journal wouldn’t hurt, for starters. Becoming a regular expert contributor on CNBC, Bloomberg TV or CNN would probably help too, as would my own monthly column in Fast Company or Forbes. (And I’ve mentioned airport bookstores, right?) But you know, that’s kind of the typical thing.

It’s mass media exposure. There’s tremendous power to being everywhere. I think if the book were sold at the checkout counter of every service station in North America, I would accidentally sell a few more copies. People naturally want to buy things they see. So that’s kind of the basis for exposure: the more places you are, the more likely you are to sell more of your stuff. Every writer and publisher knows this: even if your book sucks, a great cover, a whole brick of copies front and center of the store, and cool promotional posters everywhere will move copies. It’s a given.

We aren’t talking about a meritocracy here. The best books don’t necessarily get pushed to the front; the ones with the most money behind them do. The reality for a new writer like me is that no publisher is going to throw a lot of marketing money behind a book like Social Media ROI, no matter how good or important it is. So you have to get creative. You have to work with what you have.

Interviews like this help a lot. I speak at conferences around the world. My blog is also kind of well read and I have a decent following on the twitternets now. All of those things add up. You have to put your eggs in a lot of different baskets, even if you start off with a bunch of really, really small baskets. And sometimes, you just get lucky. You catch a break. That’s important too.

I would say that going into its second year, sales of the book are being driven mostly by two things: word-of-mouth, and search. Most people who discover the book and read it end up liking it a lot, so they tell their friends and coworkers – even their bosses – about it, and so it spreads that way, organically. When it comes to search, I haven’t focused on “owning” the right keywords, but I’ve kind of put my stamp on the topic of social media ROI for the last few years, so it’s kind of difficult to google the term without running into me or the book. That’s the very definition of earned media for you, and it works very well.

One more avenue that might be key to the book’s longevity is universities. Social Media ROI works very well as a textbook. There’s a massive opportunity there for a book like this at the university level – graduate and undergraduate – and we’re seeing the start of that already. Increasingly, I find myself being invited to speak to students by professors who used the book as a teaching tool. I love that and hope I will see more and more of it. When you look at the sales numbers from university book stores as opposed to just, you know, the Amazons and B&Ns of the world, you realize that there’s a lot more to the publishing world than meets the eye. Don’t underestimate niches, either when it comes to genre or distribution.

Liz: My clients are senior executives and very busy people. Many struggle with finding the time to write their books while holding down high-level positions. What time management (or self-management) tips could you give them?

That’s a great question. They have a few options:

1. Hire a ghost-writer. It isn’t uncommon for high-visibility CEOs and celebrities to go that route. It becomes more of a collaboration than what the average writer goes through, but it takes care of the two biggest hurdles facing a busy, high profile executive: the time factor, and the very real possibility that they might not be talented enough to actually write the book themselves — even though they are probably smart enough to be the driving force behind what the book has to say.

2. Write a short book. Some of the best management books I’ve read were less than two hundred pages. Nobody needs to write a three-hundred page brick like Social Media ROI. (It comes in at one pound, give or take a few grams.) My next book probably won’t be that big. It just so happened that this one needed to be. Small works. Look at books like the seminal The One Minute Manager, by Kenneth Blanchard (no relation) and Spencer Johnson, or Do The Work, by Steven Pressfield. Writing a book doesn’t have to become a Herculean endeavor. Keep it simple. Keep it short.

3. Really want it. Nobody can expect to write a book unless they have a fire burning inside them to see it done. It’s a long game, this book business. Writing seems like the hardest part, but you realize it’s actually the easiest once you come through that initial gauntlet. Anybody can write a book. Look around. Walk through any book store and pick up some of those discount books that sit around in the bargain bin. Somebody sat there and wrote those. They were living the dream, right?

Well, the reality of it is that there are worse things than not getting published: like publishing a really horrible book nobody likes; a book that flops and ends up in some bargain twelve-books-for-a-dollar bin in some frozen corner of Nebraska. That’s an aspect of this kind of project that any aspiring writer, especially an executive, needs to consider. Finding the time to write a book is just part of the equation. They also have to make damn sure that six months later – and years later, even – the book is something that can be seen as a feather in their professional cap rather than a stain on their career, if not an outright black eye. So… there’s that. Think beyond just making time to write the thing. Look well beyond the crest of that next hill.

Writing a book is just the beginning. You have to follow through and make it count.

Liz: Thanks so much, Olivier.

My review of Olivier’s book Social Media ROI appears in my Thought Readership column soon. Check back for the latest on books that work (like his) and those that don’t (like this one).

Apr

06

Olivier Blanchard on Commercial vs Self-Publishing: #2

Olivier Blanchard, Author

Here is the second of my three-part interview with the delightful Olivier Blanchard, author of Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization (Que, 2011).

Liz: What were your reasons for going with a commercial publisher for this book (in this case, an imprint of Pearson Education), rather than publishing it yourself? What didn’t you know that you didn’t know, prior to becoming a published author?

Well… The publisher approached me, so that part was easy. I didn’t have to shop the book around. It was all pretty serendipitous. Having said that, I wouldn’t have dreamed of publishing this book on my own, and for two simple reasons:

The first is credibility. When it comes to fiction, I don’t think there’s much of a difference anymore between self-published authors and professionally published authors. Look at the success that some self-published authors are already seeing. It’s amazing. We’ve entered a new era of publishing for fiction authors. The gates are crumbling. Amazon is taking bulldozers to the old publishing world and carving out whole new neighborhoods, highways, and shopping malls. But when it comes to non-fiction, especially business books, we still have a ways to go before self-published books can shed the stigma of not having been “properly” published. If for no other reason, Social Media ROI had to go through a traditional publisher. It couldn’t be just a self-published e-book.

The second is the amount if work it takes to actually get a book to market: Production, distribution, publicity, etc. What most writers don’t realize until they’ve gone through this process is just how much goes into making sure that a book will become a successful product. At the core of that success is a team: The writer and the editor. I am not sure that most people appreciate the importance of the editor in that process – sometimes a whole team of editors, actually. An average writer and a fantastic editor working together can produce an amazing book. Conversely, an incredibly talented writer with no editor might just end up writing a thousand-page wreck. Working with a reputable publisher generally takes care of that problem, so there’s that.

I also mentioned earlier how having deadlines and looking at the project as a job helps get it done. Writers are natural procrastinators. Add a perfectionist streak to that trait and now you have a perfect recipe for “the book project” that takes seven years to complete. No thanks. The point is to get the book out and share it with the world, not to fiddle with it for the better part of a decade. Having someone to push you and keep you to a set schedule is pretty key.

Also, business book readers don’t exactly have the same habits and expectations as fiction readers. They tend to shop for books differently, read books differently, and they still like paper. It’s still a lot easier to highlight, earmark and sticky-note a physical book than to take notes on a tablet. For a book like Social Media ROI, all of these little details mattered: The book needed to be in book stores. I felt that people needed to see it on the shelf, next to Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki. It needed to have a physical presence from a credibility standpoint. From a more practical standpoint, I wanted it to be discovered by business managers and executives who aren’t necessarily e-format readers or blog readers. Self-publishing limits you somewhat to the electronic format, and that would have ignored that portion of my intended audience.

Production and distribution-wise, even if I wanted to arrange for the book to be printed and had the money to do it, I didn’t want to have to deal with trying to sell it to book stores across the country, across the world, even. It just wasn’t practical. So I needed to work with a real publisher. You give up a few things when you do that, but the balance of it hasn’t been bad: the book doesn’t seem to be slowing down, it’s being sold in book stores around the world, it’s being translated into a half dozen languages. It’s a dream come true for a guy like me. Going with a traditional publisher was the right decision. It would have never been a success if I had gone the self-publishing route.

Liz: I know publishers never like to reveal sales figures, but just between you and me — how has the book done sales-wise since its publication last year? What advice would you give to first-time authors like yourself about marketing and promoting a nonfiction book?

You’re going to laugh, but I actually don’t know how many copies the book has sold. I’m slack like that. Once it’s sold a hundred thousand copies, I’ll know that. It’s when I’ll start paying attention because that’s something I can legitimately brag about. But until then, I don’t know. At any rate, I can’t look it up right now either because I’m in France and the monthly statements I get from my publisher are back in the US. But look, the book is doing okay. It’s no New York Times bestseller or anything, but it sells so I can’t really complain.

You know, I have to talk about perspective here for a minute, because it’s important when we start talking about success and whatnot. Let’s face it: It’s my first book and I’m kind of a nobody on the world stage. By that, I mean that I’m not Jack Welch or Steve Jobs. I’m not even Seth Godin or Malcolm Gladwell. People aren’t going to line up around the block to read my book or score my autograph. I’m not a household name. And it isn’t being sold in airport book stores either, which for this kind of book is kind of an arrow to the knee. So once you’ve taken all of that in and you’ve taken a step back to get some perspective on how big the publishing world is, how many books are published each year, and the scandalous percentage of books that just plain fail, it’s a miracle that it’s been as successful as it has been. At least to me. Could it be doing better? Sure. But could it be doing worse? Absolutely. And it would be devastating for me, to have put so much work and hope into it only to see it flop and go nowhere.

What I can tell you is that after just a few months on the shelves, it had already beaten the odds when it comes to books making it or failing outright. I remember not too long after it came out when I saw that it had sold more than five thousand copies because that’s kind of a benchmark for pretty much any book. Most books that get published never quite manage to reach it, which is really scary when you think about how hard it is to get a book published to begin with. So I think that if you’re a new writer and you can sell five thousand copies of a book and watch it just keep going, that’s something. It’s like a series of clubs. The first club you get into is the “I’m published” club, and then there’s the “I’ve actually sold a few books club,” but then there’s that one, the “five-thousand” club, which I think also coincides with the “my publisher just broke even” club, which is nice. It gets you invited back, I think. (I hope.) Then if you’re lucky, you move up to the ten-thousand and the hundred-thousand and even the million+ clubs, and even the “my book was turned into a movie” club, and so on. One can hope. It’s what I’m shooting for anyway. Not that a movie based on this book would be all that fascinating, but you never know.

In the final part (#3) of this interview with Olivier Blanchard, we talk about “discoverability,” longevity, and his time management tips for busy executives and entrepreneurs planning to write a book. Stay tuned for Part Three soon!

Mar

31

Olivier Blanchard on Becoming An Author #1

Active Garage / Articles Posted by drliz / 1 comments

To supplement the book reviews I offer on Active Garage.com under the category of Thought Readership (not a typo!), I like to — where possible — interview the authors.

Olivier Blanchard, Author

Brand strategist Olivier Blanchard’s Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization (Que – an imprint of Pearson Education, 2011) is due to appear on that site on April 30th. Before then, here’s the first of a three-parter with Blanchard, talking about — among other things — the differences between writing a blog and writing a book.

Liz: Olivier, probably the first thing that struck (and impressed) me about your book was your conversational writing style. I know that you do a lot of blogging but since this is your first book, how come you were able to write so engagingly? Is this a gift you were born with or something you’ve honed and refined over time?

Well… first, thank you. I appreciate that. I don’t know, really. I used to draw and write a lot even when I was little; that’s probably where it started. Every year until ninth grade, some random essay question that I’d answered on an exam invariably ended up getting published in the annual student “literary” publication. It was just a horrible little collection of poems and vacation stories, but it made my parents terribly proud. Naturally, it encouraged me to keep writing; that and a few of my teachers who told me I should focus on doing a lot more of it.

But there’s another piece to this: I think that writers are naturally drawn to write the sorts of things they read. Before I started blogging, I spent a lot of time reading magazine editorials and feature news stories; short stuff. I wasn’t reading a lot of books but Fast Company, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and Newsweek. I loved the kind of writing I found in those publications. It was crisp and fresh and had an easy style to it. When I started blogging, I sort of went with that. It seemed a natural fit. If I had been fonder of books, perhaps things would have moved in a different direction.

Let’s talk about the difference between writing a book and writing a blog. A lot of folks think writing a blog is a way of collecting material they’ll then turn into a book…is that wise, in your opinion? What are the key differences, if any, between those two writing formats?

Until Pearson’s Katherine Bull came along and suggested I write Social Media ROI, I had pretty much given up on ever writing a book. I didn’t think I had either the talent or the brains for it. When I first started I thought it would be a lot like writing a hundred or so blog posts and putting them together in some sort of logical order that would more or less fit the Table of Contents. I actually tried that for about a week. It didn’t work at all. So yes, there is a very big difference between writing for a blog and writing a book. I think that people need to be aware of that.

The thing about writing a book is that you need to build into it a thread of continuity. Let’s forget about structure for a minute. A book, whether it’s a business book or a novel, always tells a story. It takes a reader from point A to point B, then from point B to point C, and so on. Just throwing together blog posts won’t work. Your book will come across as disjointed; it won’t be whole. So as a writer, you have to figure out what the story is. You have to find the narrative thread that will take the reader from the introduction to the conclusion and will give every topic and every chapter some measure of context. In that sense, you have to think “bigger” than when you write a three-page blog post or an editorial. You need much higher ceilings inside your own head. When it comes to managing your thoughts, books require scale.

Then there’s structure. A blog post can be about one thing, even if it fits into a ten-part series. A book is more like a Russian nesting doll: it has layers. Its structure is a lot more three-dimensional. You don’t just have a beginning, middle, and an end. Chapters reference each other; they build on concepts, ideas and anecdotes thqt you introduced in earlier chapters.

A book is a much bigger enterprise than a blog post. If I had to compare the two, I would say that writing a blog post is at best like building a tree house while writing a book is like building a working train station. I’ve gotten pretty decent at building tree houses. When it comes to building working train stations, I’m at best a novice and a dangerous one at that. It’s a very different animal.

How long did the whole process take…from idea to manuscript, then manuscript to published book? And what surprised you most along the way?

Olivier Blanchard, Author

I want to say it took about six months for my part to be done, four of which were devoted to writing. Then there was the production and printing, the stuff that I didn’t have a hand in. So all in all, maybe 8 months from the time I started writing to the release date?

The start was pretty easy. I spent a few weeks working with Pearson on the proposal itself. It seems trivial because there wasn’t a lot of heavy lifting involved, but in hindsight it was the most crucial part of the process. It was then that we put together the Table of Contents and what turned out to be the book’s DNA. That early in the process, you can’t really know what the book’s personality is going to be, but you do know what it is going to be about, what it is going to cover, in what order, etc.

I didn’t know it at the time, but it is one of the most important aspects of writing a book – or rather, to make it possible to finish a book. I don’t think that starting books is a problem for anyone who likes to write. Actually finishing one is the real challenge.

Having a Table of Contents and a detailed proposal gives you a road map for the book. That’s crucial, vital. I don’t think that the majority of books – business or otherwise – would actually get written without one. Think about it: you’re going to be writing a book for three, five, maybe eight months. That’s a long time to be wrestling with one project. The thing about working on something for that long is that you’re going to lose your way at some point, and probably more than once. You’re going to go off on a tangent. You’re going to take a wrong turn. If you don’t have that road map to get you back on track, you could be stuck in the weeds for a really long time. That’s how books don’t get finished. It isn’t for lack of will or talent or ability. It’s just that writers go a little crazy; they get a little lost. They end up going off course and can’t find their way back. Having a strong Table of Contents right from the start — a solid road map for the book — makes sure you can always find your way again, and sooner rather than later. It takes most of the dangerous guesswork out of the equation.

The writing itself didn’t take that long for me. I’m a pretty prolific writer. I can write fifteen, twenty pages a day if I know ahead of time what it is I want to write about.

And that’s the other thing: Having a schedule and a process in place that ensures that the schedule is the schedule. In my case, the project had been divided by Pearson into four simple due dates. Every four weeks, I owed them twenty-five percent of the manuscript. That kept the momentum going. The schedule wasn’t random or vague, it was set. Meeting that schedule was a job like any other. That kept things rolling. If my publisher hadn’t set those deadlines or incentivized me to stick to them, I would probably still be working on the book. It would have never gotten written. So deadlines matter.

Aside from those types of practical insights, I was surprised by two more things.

The first was how much more work the editing took. I don’t know if other writers have the same experience, but I found the editing portion of the project a lot more difficult and time-consuming than the actual writing. I swear I must have spent three times more energy reworking chapters than writing them in the first place.

The second thing was how important it is to feel that you have someone in the trenches with you during the entire process, especially when you’re going through tough spells (and every writer does). The relationship between a writer and an acquisitions editor is far more important than people realize. The two have to get along. They have to work together, build a rapport, build trust and mutual respect and even some measure of affection. That human element is key. If you don’t have that, I think you’re going to end up with a pretty lifeless book.

In Part Two of this interview, Blanchard explains why he went with a commercial publisher rather than self-publishing his book, how well it’s selling, and his aspirations as an author.

If you have written a book or have a particular favorite (recently published) title that you’d like me to review for the Thought Readership series, email me the details and I’ll see what I can do!

Feb

20

Mike Figliuolo, author of One Piece of Paper

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Mike Figliuolo, Author of One Piece of Paper

Mike Figliuolo is the the founder and managing director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC, a professional services firm specializing in leadership development, and a nationally-recognized speaker and blogger on the topic of leadership.

His book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2011) can help any leader cut through the crap we’re all guilty of succumbing to when we haven’t fully thought through what we stand for, or about the experiences that have shaped who we are. (Read page 15 of the book to get a flavor of what that sounds like. It’s cringe-worthy!).

For more on the specifics of the book, check out Figliuolo’s many five-star reviews on Amazon (I wrote one of them).

We emailed recently about his experience writing the book:

Dr Liz: What was it that prompted you to include your army experience in the book, rather than just focus on your consulting career?

Mike Figliuolo:

My leadership style has been influenced by the entirety of my personal experience. From my high school days as a wrestler and soccer player to West Point, to the Army, to McKinsey, to corporate, to running my own business, all of those experiences have informed how I show up as a leader. I learned things at McKinsey that I would have never learned in the Army (corporate strategy, innovation, etc.) so including experiences from those roles helped illustrate how I’ve grown up as a leader. Additionally, if the book was 100% military experiences, many readers would have a hard time relating to the content. By covering leadership in many different industries and roles, the book became more accessible to a broader readership.

Dr Liz: How long did the book take you to write and what was your biggest challenge during that writing period?

The book is based on a course I’ve taught for several years so most of the stories, the framework, and the content already existed in my head. The act of writing the first draft took two months. The first round of my edits took about 3 weeks. Final edits were another few weeks. All-in, from getting the contract to books on the shelf was 14 months but much of the latter portion of that was promotion preparation, production, marketing, etc. I think the biggest challenge was not having a stroke when I got the first round of edits back – it was 286 pages of red ink! Truth be told, though, those edits made my book exponentially better than it would have been without my editor’s input.

Dr Liz: What was the biggest surprise – maybe something you didn’t expect or thought would be different — from the whole publishing experience?

The biggest positive surprise was the quality of the editing that was done. I like to fancy myself a decent writer but I was blown away with how wonderful the editors were and how much more compelling they made my work. It’s not just typos and spelling that they fix – they helped tremendously with structure, clarity, and brevity too. The other surprise was how much of the promotion of the book falls on the author. It was a lot more than I initially thought it would be. Arguably, writing the book was the easy part – promoting it is a lot of worthwhile effort.

Dr Liz: Which business book (if any) has had the greatest influence on your thinking, your writing style, or both – and why?

It’s not a business book – it’s The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway. The one line in it that states “but man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” has gotten me through more turmoil and difficult times in my life than you can believe. That notion has deeply affected my thinking and my approach to the world. To me, defeat is about giving up – it’s something you choose to do. Destruction is out of your control and imposed upon you by another. I never, ever, ever, ever give up.

Dr Liz: Why did you think it important to write a book and in what specific ways has it contributed to the ongoing success of your business?

Writing the book is a great way to affect the lives of others. It has given me a tremendous reach across the professional community. I love teaching, learning, and leading. The book enables me to teach a much broader audience than I would otherwise get to interact with. As far as its contribution to my business, it has clarified my own thinking in many ways and it has brought new clients to my door. What’s really fun is now teaching the course that the book is based upon after people have read the book. The conversation in the classroom is exponentially richer than it was before the book existed. That happens because people are now coming to class having read the book and they’re already deeply immersed in the content before we start the conversation.

Dr Liz: Finally, if you had one piece of advice to offer aspiring thought leaders — what would it be?

Do. Just shut up and do. I’m so tired of talking. People talk incessantly about all the things they want to change or that should be different. In my experience, true leaders just go and do. They make stuff happen. Shut up and do. You’ll be amazed by what you’re capable of changing in the world around you.

Dr Liz: Love it, Mike — great advice. Thanks for the interview and good luck with the book!

My Thought Readership review of Mike’s book can be found on ActiveGarage.com here.

If you’re interested in how to capture your leadership philosophy on one piece of 8.5 x 11″ paper, Mike teaches a course based on the method outlined in the book (or, to be more accurate, the book is based on the course he’s taught for years – which is arguably why it’s so well conceived).

More details of that course can be found here:http://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/services/leadership-maxims/.

Feb

13

Vinay Iyer on The Customer Experience Edge authorship experience

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Vinay Iyer is co-author of The Customer Experience Edge with fellow SAP senior executives Reza Soudager and Dr. Volker G. Hildebrand. Prior to including this book as an example of the power of original research for my Thought Readership series, I interviewed him about the experience of becoming an author.

Dr Liz: I believe you hadn’t originally planned to write a book, that this was a research project you were engaged in that you decided to write up in book form. If that’s correct, how long were you actively engaged in the research and how long did it take you to write the book to final draft?

Vinay Iyer:

Yes, we started to do some research into the Customer Centricity / Experience topic since it was becoming a common theme at the Board and C-levels at companies. We also came across IBM’s Global CEO study where they found that getting closer to the customer was the top priority for CEOs globally, above everything else. We commissioned Bloomberg BusinessWeek to do some research for us on this topic by surveying their reader base and also interviewing some companies that had achieved significant transformations by focusing on their customers above everything else. All this research, over a period of 12 months or so, generated a lot of valuable insights that led to the idea of a book. Once we successfully pitched the idea of the book to our publisher McGraw Hill, the writing of the book and various edits and revisions took another six or so months. So, overall, it was an 18 month project.

Dr Liz: Why did you decide to go with McGraw Hill as your publisher? Had you considered self-publishing?

Among many things that could be written on this topic, we discovered that there are not many business books out there that help transform a ‘customer-centricity’ strategy into successful implementation – especially with the successful leverage of technology. Our research had made it pretty clear that in today’s world, strategic use of the right technologies was going to be critical to the implementation of any successful customer-centricity strategy. So, there clearly was a white space in the market for such a book. The audience for such a book is global and this topic is of relevance to every company large or small. We were told that, as relatively unknown authors, it would be advisable to leverage the distribution power of a big publisher like McGraw Hill (assuming they would be interested in this topic, of course) rather than private publication and then having to try and figure out how to get access to all the distribution channels!

Dr Liz: What are you particularly proud of with respect to how the book was structured and written? What do you think is your book’s best feature?

One of the big challenges was how to take a rather complex subject like Customer Experience and distill down the key messages in ways that an average business person could comprehend. As experts on this topic, it would have been very easy for us to dwell on esoteric topics and the complexities involved in attaining the objectives. Our goal was to reach a broader market and help the average reader grasp this important topic and, more importantly, help the reader gain some practical ideas for what can be done. This took a lot of soul searching and I am particularly proud of the fact that we broke down the complex topic into 4 simple (but very deep) pillars of excellence. To deliver on the demands of today’s customer expectations, companies will have to focus on the pillars of Reliability, Relevancy, Responsiveness and Convenience. If companies can do all of these consistently at reasonable cost, during every customer interaction, with every customer (not just the top 100 or so), they have what it takes to succeed in today’s world!

Dr Liz: What surprised you most about the book publishing experience?

It was pretty amazing to realize that, despite living in the age of the Internet, Social Media, Smart Phones, Kindles, Nooks, etc., printed books still matter! I was a skeptic when we started out (my wife had just bought me a Kindle), but, now that I am living the experience of a published, hard-copy book author, I am glad we did it. I suppose human nature is difficult to completely change and a lot of people still care about a printed book. Despite having a Kindle, I find myself returning to a printed book every so often because, no matter what they say, the printed book experience is not (yet) substitutable by any modern technological gizmo!

Dr Liz: Roughly how many books have you sold and given away — two separate numbers if possible — since the book was published?

I checked with the publisher who doesn’t want to reveal these numbers publicly. What I can tell you is that in the first eight weeks that the book was available, we have sold several thousand copies through outlets like Barnes & Noble book stores as well as online retailers like Amazon.com. We are experiencing an interesting trend where approximately 30% of book purchases are eBooks, compared to around 10% industry average for business books overall.

Catch my review of The Customer Experience Edge on Monday, March 5th at ActiveGarage.com.

If you are a business book author or represent someone who is and would like to be considered for review either here or through my Thought Readership series, please email me at info (at) drlizalexander (dot) com with details.

Feb

06

NEW Thought Readership Series on ActiveGarage.com

Active Garage Posted by drliz / 0 comments

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia. ~ Woody Allen

You may have heard it from one of your teachers or a blogger. Certainly, many authors admit to it being so. Reading makes us better writers.

But here’s a proviso. It helps if you think about what you’re reading, perhaps with a view to how you might have crafted that nonfiction book or novel yourself. And that thinking is helped if you have some idea of what you’re looking for in the first place.

That’s why I leapt at the opportunity to write a regular article series for ActiveGarage.com that we’re calling Thought Readership and which debuts today (Monday, February 6^th).

Thought Readership series logo

Every two weeks I’ll post a hybrid “review/how-to” that highlights how one author successfully (or not) exemplified a skill that aspiring business authors might hope to showcase in their own books.

Whether or not you have a desire to write a book one day yourself, my fervent wish is that this series introduces you to some titles that might otherwise have not crossed your radar, and provokes you think more critically about the books you are reading.

As someone who tends to be more humorous in person and when giving talks than when writing, I’m also going to use this series as a practice ground for “lightening up” when it comes to books I think are pretty crappy. Rather than offer you a polemic every third or fourth time – which is how often I plan to analyze the “boo-boos” – I hope to modify my own writing style after reading less-judgmental, witty, and thought provoking articles by folks I admire like Rajesh Setty, Sonia Simone, and the folks at IncBlot.

Oh, and one day in the not-so-distant future I’ll be repurposing this material to create a new e-book, entitled Thought Readership.

So, do check out the introductory article for the new series here. Please comment below or on ActiveGarage to give your perspective on these articles. As Seth Godin points out, it’s just commentary otherwise. I’d prefer it to be a two-way conversation.

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