A Creative Book Promotion Inspires

I’ve been uninspired lately. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t posted to this blog in over a week. But that changed last night when I was on BzzAgent submitting a bzz report for a product I’m testing out. Here’s what inspired me. Dave Balter (founder of BzzAgent) is coming out with a new book, The Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II. That’s not what struck me. Dave’s first book Grapevine was great, but I wasn’t feeling a need for a sequel. What caught my eye was the promise that with every pre-ordered book Dave would mark it with handwritten annotations and (this is what really interested me) Seth Minkin, BzzAgent’s artist-in-residence would illustrate some of the annotations. Seth is one of my favorite artists. I love his work; it’s quirky and fun, much like Seth himself. And I’d happily pay for a book that included some of his hand drawn illustrations. So I’ve placed a pre-order for a book I’m not all that interested in reading. I did it because of the extra effort that Dave and Seth are willing to put into the effort. We can all learn a lot from this example and I hope it inspires you, as it will me, to put a little extra effort into our products, marketing or whatever else we’re concentrating on. And the icing on the cake – the book was only $7 and at checkout I got a surprise, Dave will be throwing in a free copy of Grapevine.