I’m happy to announce that Personality Not Included was chosen as a book of the month by Soundview Executive Book Summaries. In case you aren’t familiar with them, they are a group that review thousands of business books a year and select two each month to summarize in both audio and downloadable PDF format for subscribers. It is a huge honor to be chosen and I’m thrilled to be among titles like Influencer, Meatball Sundae, and The New Age of Innovation. Check out their site to see how you can get a download and summary of the book - or if you already have a copy, be sure to read page 185 where I take my own shot at summarizing the whole first section of the book in just 60 words. The most profound ideas shouldn’t take long to explain. Hopefully I manage to live up to that truth.
When I was traveling in Beijing I had the thrill of finding the book in one of two big English language bookstores in the city. The Wangfujing Bookstore had three copies of PNI (pictured in the photos below). The other bookstore didn’t have it, because they were sold out! Also in the gallery below are some shots from a few media interviews I did with press in the Ogilvy Beijing office:
One of the frustrating things about writing a book is that the “metrics” you get back from the publishing industry are less than complete. As an internet marketer, I’m used to getting a certain level of detail with reporting and when you write and publish a book you need to quickly get used to the fact that you will never have those kinds of metrics. Still, over the past few months since my book came out, I’ve developed my own sense for reading between the lines to pay attention to metrics that really matter. Here are just a few that I’ve uncovered that I use to better understand how my marketing efforts for the book are doing:
- Quality and quantity of speaking invitations - Since the book came out, the fastest return (almost overnight) was the types of speaking invitations I have been getting. Instead of leading panels, I have consistent offers to do keynotes, Instead of me proactively reaching out to groups for speaking invitations, they are now emailing me. I attribute this to two things - the first is the fact that I have a book, and the second is positive word of mouth from my previous speaking gigs. Lots of these invites are coming from people who have heard me speak at another event. So if you have spread the word or recommended me for a speaking gig - thanks!
Welcome to all of you BzzAgents who are making it to this site as a result of Frogpond campaign that I recently launched this week. I’ve been reading furiously trying to keep up with the nearly 2500 reviews and comments that you have left about this site and the book and contrary to what you might think, I don’t have a team of people to help read all of them so I’ve been going through all of them myself! From what I have learned so far, there are basically three categories of comments:
- Not interesting - for BzzAgents who are just not into business and don’t know anyone who runs a business or works in business … the book didn’t have much to offer.
- Like the book, but the website was confusing - many people read and enjoyed the excerpt (though many people wished for more content from the book to consume). Others thought it could be interesting, but were confused or turned off by the website.
- Loved it and bought it - this was my favourite category (obviously!) of people who loved what they read on this site or through the excerpts and said they would go ahead and buy the book.
I haven’t done a full analysis, but these categories seemed about equal in their spread (33% each). As I spent some time this weekend thinking about what to do to incorporate this feedback, I decided to focus on two things. The first was to correct some BzzAgents who thought the campaign was run by a big organization (it wasn’t … it’s just me). The second was to offer the second group from the list above more information to hopefully address their concerns and help them figure out if the book may actually be useful for them or someone else they know.
To that end, I redesigned the main section of the homepage to use a better description of what the book is all about. In addition, I’m releasing another book excerpt of material, available at www.personalitynotincluded.com/pnibonusexcerpt.pdf. This excerpt is the first several pages of Chapter 6 and should give even more of an idea of what the book is about. Happy reading and if you’re a BzzAgent and made it here, let me know if any of this helps!
Paul Dunay, a fellow marketing blogger and creator of the Buzz Marketing For Technology Podcast just published an interview we did together a few weeks ago. His show is one of the best for BtoB technology marketers looking for a great professional interview series - I highly recommend subscribing to get all of Paul’s updates.
Below is the transcript and notes from our show:
I had the chance to make it out to the iconic Strand bookstore in NY last week and launched a search for PNI. I found two review copies in the Reviewer section of the store … a place where they sell the review copies that the store gets for 50% off of retail. So PNI was selling there at Strand for about $12 - definitely the cheapest I have seen it for sale so far. There were only two copies left when I was there a few days ago, so if you want to save a few bucks and live in NY you better get there fast!
Since I launched my new book PNI, I have been getting emails, Facebook messages, Twitter updates and live feedback at events about what people liked and didn’t like about the book. These comments are a wealth of insight, but no one aside from me is getting the benefit of seeing them. Amazon reviews are the most visible way right now of sharing this type of feedback, but most people will not bother to go to the effort to write a review on Amazon - unless they have the right incentive. That’s what this post is about.
If you have read Personality Not Included and have some thoughts about it, I’m asking you to post your review on Amazon.com (or on an international version of Amazon if you happen to be outside the US). To offer an incentive, I also agreed with my publisher that we will be taking one quote from an Amazon review and featuring it on the outside back cover of the next edition printing of Personality Not Included (McGraw-Hill makes the final call). That means anyone who picks up the book in a bookstore or searches it online will see your name and organization name or URL. So before I start, I want to clarify a few things.
First of all, I am NOT in any way asking you to lie or share opinions about PNI that you don’t personally feel. If you read the book and hated it, go ahead and post your review to that effect on Amazon or anywhere else. I probably won’t use it for the back cover (obviously), but I’m not trying to stop you from doing that. Instead, my goal is to reach the many people who have read the book, but have not posted a review on Amazon because there is no tangible reason or benefit. Hopefully, this idea gives you a reason … visibility. You don’t need to be a blogger or a CMO to participate. My goal is to take a piece of REAL feedback from one of you and feature it on the back cover of the second edition, and encourage some useful book reviews on Amazon.
If you have already posted a review, don’t worry - you’ll be included in this competition. If you haven’t, but had some thoughts after reading the book, please share them on Amazon. And if you think this idea is just a cheap stunt to get more Amazon reviews, post a comment here and let’s talk about it. As an author, asking for reviews is a minefield because you don’t want to manipulate people, but you do want them to review the book so more people hear about it. Successful or not, I’m considering this an experiment in doing that.
Admission: For the more astute, you probably noted an assumption in this post - which is that PNI will actually get a second edition printed. All expectations from the publisher are that we will do one … but it does depend on sales of the first edition, so I don’t want to mislead anyone to thinking its a done deal. The chances are pretty good, though.
As part of the Blogger Social event this past weekend, I had the chance to host a really interesting and unique meetup for several bloggers who were willing to pull themselves out of bed for a 9:30 am brainstorm meeting all about ideas to promote PNI. The core challenge to all 15 people who showed up was to answer the question of how they would promote the book is they had 25 copies and $200. Below is the winning idea that the group voted for, which actually combined two great ideas from Matt and Anna into a single one. Many of the concepts focused on passing books around in a viral way, and this idea had an interesting structure and charity component to it. Since this was the winning idea, I’ll be working with both Matt and Anna (depending on how much time they are both willing to give) to make this idea happen:
THE WINNING IDEA (Matt Dickman and Anna Farmery):
Everyone wants to get their book into the hands of top influencers. The best book marketing involves lots of pass along too, where people tell others about the book and share their insights and feedback. The trick is getting the right people to read it and pass it on. The winning idea combines the necessity for getting the book into the hands of right people with an innovative way to get them to pass it along. Essentially, we would identify a list of top 10-25 marketers, bloggers, authors and executives. Each one would be given a copy of the book to read and share 6 “margin notes” - 1 per chapter (reflections to passages in the book). Once they have finished with it, they need to pass it along to another influencer in their network. That person would also share their margin notes (again, 1 per chapter).
Anyone would be able to track progress throughout the campaign and at the end, all the resulting books would be auctioned off for Charity (or given to charities to auction as part of an existing event). what do you think - does this work? Also, please share who you think might be a good candidate for this list.
Though the majority of the launch for PNI so far has been non-traditional, there is a benefit to mixing it with the traditional as well. You don’t get much more traditional than a good old-fashioned press release and this morning we sent out a release on the newswire about the book release. You can read the Personality Not Included Press Release on the PR Newswire site - and see a chronicle list of links here throughout the next few days where I will link to all the sites that pickup the release. These are not interviews, just reposts of the release … but I’ll be running an experiment to see how much pickup this traditional tactic can generate. Of course, the media outreach goes far beyond this one release - but I’m watching what you might call the “passive pickup” of the release with interest:
Let’s keep cheering for a slow news day! 
Last week I launched an open call to bloggers to ask questions and do a “virtual interview” with me about the book. I had 55 bloggers take me up on the offer and I recently went through the list and highlighted what I thought were the top 12 interviews. You can see the list below, and vote for your favourite in the poll below. The top five vote getters (and the #1 write-in vote getter) will all get signed copies of the book, and the Blogger with the most votes will get a $100 gift certificate from Amazon.com. Enjoy the interviews and happy voting!
- Scott Monty | Interview Link
- Todd Andrlik | Interview Link
- Kevin Dugan | Interview Link
- Bruce Reyes-Chow | Interview Link
- Jonny Goldstein | Interview Link
- David Berkowitz | Interview Link
- Krishna De | Interview Link
- Connie Bensen | Interview Link
- Ronna Porter | Interview Link
- Zachary J. Braiker | Interview Link
- Gaurav Mishra | Interview Link
- Linda Sherman | Interview Link
Voting will close this Friday at midnight.
The Vote:
As part of the launch of Personality Not Included, this blog will aim to share all kinds of content focused on the theme of marketing for the book … that personality matters. Over the next several months (and possibly beyond), you’ll find the following types of content:
- First look at new bonus content created around the book
- An inside preview at all the marketing for the book and latest news
- A special section called BIWIM (Brands I Wish I Mentioned) which profiles great companies that didn’t make it into the book
- Interview series with a range of authors, businesspeople and others
- “Faceless Alerts” that highlight situations of corporate facelessness and suggest alternatives that could help them regain their personalities
- And lots more!
To start, let me point you towards a series of interviews that I just completed with more than 50 bloggers who generously took up my offer to send their 5 questions relating to the book to me for answer that they could publish on their blogs. The compliation of these answers offers not only an interesting conversation about the nature and importance of personality in business … but also several clues about content in the book, stories behind the stories and exclusive content and insights that I have not shared before. It would certainly take some time to get through all the interviews … but you can go through and read one or all 55 on my other blog - the Influential Marketing blog. I’d love to hear what you think of them!