Seth Godin has a certain degree of irreverence mixed with much wisdom and practicality. I typically give more weight to what he says than to many in the blogosphere, especially the Mother Bloggers. What's a Mother Blogger? I will explain at the end of this post.
If you are writing a book or thinking of doing so, here are two Godin posts on making your book a success. If your book is already a reality, for you much of his advice is too late.
Each Godin post is a list. Below I will include a few items from each list and you can click through to read the list in its entirety if you find the few items helpful.
From Advice for authors . . .
I get a fair number of notes from well respected, intelligent people who are embarking on their first non-fiction book project. They tend to ask very similar questions, so I thought I'd go ahead and put down my five big ideas in one place to make it easier for everyone.
I guarantee you that you won't agree with all of them, but, as they say, your mileage my vary.
1. Please understand that book publishing is an organized hobby, not a business.
The return on equity and return on time for authors and for publishers is horrendous. If you're doing it for the money, you're going to be disappointed.
On the other hand, a book gives you leverage to spread an idea and a brand far and wide. There's a worldview that's quite common that says that people who write books know what they are talking about and that a book confers some sort of authority.
2. The timeframe for the launch of books has gone from silly to unrealistic.
When the world moved more slowly, waiting more than a year for a book to come out was not great, but tolerable. Today, even though all other media has accelerated rapidly, books still take a year or more. You need to consider what the shelf life of your idea is.
3. There is no such thing as effective book promotion by a book publisher.
The rest of Advice for authors.
From Advice for authors (yes, he is consistent in the way he has titled these two posts) . . .
With more than 75,000 books published every year (not counting ebooks or blogs), the odds are actually pretty good that you've either written a book, are writing a book or want to write one.
Hence this short list:
Last week on the LegalEd listserv Professor Larry Krieger with great enthusiasm announced that his efforts (and those of several other law profs) were rewarded. The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) has granted their petition to add a section dedicated to balance in legal education. Krieger says in his announcing post . . .
