Comments on: Clever way to promote a book http://digitalecologist.com/clever-way-to-promote-a-book/ thoughts, raves and hypertext about the digital ecosystem we live in Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:12:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Mark Shea http://digitalecologist.com/clever-way-to-promote-a-book/#comment-230 Mark Shea Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:38:39 +0000 http://digitalecologist.com/?p=820#comment-230 I was talking to one of our Acquisition Editors at Microsoft about this very thing this week. There is a lot of opportunity for self-publishers who use venues like Lulu or Blurb. They can build communities around their book. I think "Dream it. List it." falls a little short of that vision. They draw the community in but are really missing the boat when it comes to follow through. They are leaving tons of money on the table. What if I want to communicate with other people of my "quiz type"? What if I want to book an airline ticket to bag my four continents? Yep, they are falling way short. And no, I wouldn't buy the book. My suspicion is that I have derived all of the value that I will get from the book by merely taking the pre-exposed quiz. If they had a community, I might look twice....just sayin'. I was talking to one of our Acquisition Editors at Microsoft about this very thing this week. There is a lot of opportunity for self-publishers who use venues like Lulu or Blurb. They can build communities around their book. I think “Dream it. List it.” falls a little short of that vision. They draw the community in but are really missing the boat when it comes to follow through. They are leaving tons of money on the table. What if I want to communicate with other people of my “quiz type”? What if I want to book an airline ticket to bag my four continents? Yep, they are falling way short.

And no, I wouldn’t buy the book. My suspicion is that I have derived all of the value that I will get from the book by merely taking the pre-exposed quiz. If they had a community, I might look twice….just sayin’.

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