Seth Godin is my favorite business writer right now.
In fact, as I look around, my desk is littered with copies of his books – Purple Cow (my favorite), All Marketers are Liars, and Unleashing the Ideavirus.
Read these books and learn about how to build and market products that will excite your customers. See here for a short interview with Seth by Brian Oberkirch.
I haven’t had the opportunity to meet Seth in person yet, but I sure hope to. I’ll probably act like a teenage girl meeting some cool pop band, and not know what to say. Maybe I’ll get a picture with him. That would be cool.
His books are crisply written and to the point. And his points are good. One of my favorite quotes, from Purple Cow, is:
If someone in your organization is charged with creating a Purple Cow, leave them alone! Don’t use internal reviews and usability testing to figure out if the new product is as good as what you’ve got now. Instead, pick the right maverick and get out of the way.
As I mentioned in a recent weekly summary (see no. 6), Seth’s new book, The Big Moo, is coming out and he’s eating his own dogfood in promoting it. Seth has started selling batches of 50 galley copies to people if they promise to “sneeze” the book to other influential people. I purchased 50 copies, and am now offering them to TechCrunch readers.
By the way, the book is another winner. It’s a collaborative effort – Seth has brought in 33 “of the world’s smartest business thinkers” to write the book. I started it last night and have almost finished it. I am learning to not be boring. I am trying to be fearless. I am going to risk it all (more on this later…edgeio).
I am giving these books away. The first 10 comments to this post get a free copy. I’ll even pay the shipping if you are in the US or Canada. If you are somewhere else, I’ll ask for $5 in shipping. Dave Wheeler did the same thing and got an overwhelming response.
I’ll send another batch to the first 10 people who post about the book and trackback here. Same rules apply on shipping.
If you comment, I already have your email address. If you trackback, make sure you send you email me at editor@beta.techcrunch.com along with the post URL. Once I have the 20 complete, I’ll send out a mass email to get your shipping address.
Good luck to those of you who use slow RSS readers. :-)