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.