Book Marketing: Wisdom From Seth Godin

Wondering how a master marketer thinks about books and the launch process?

To explore book marketing, blogging and podcasts, I interview Seth Godin.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode I'll interview Seth Godin, author of 17 books, including Purple Cow, Permission Marketing and Tribes. He blogs every day on topics related to marketing, leadership and more. He also has an excellent podcast mini-series called Seth Godin's Startup School.

Seth and I explore his latest book along with his thoughts on publishing and marketing books.

You'll discover Seth's philosophy on writing, the importance he puts on blogging and more.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Book Marketing
Seth's new book

Seth's latest book is called, What to Do When It's Your Turn (and It's Always Your Turn). He explains that he usually comes up with the title early in the process, and then writes the book to go with it. However, in this case, the title came second to last.

The book exists because when his son was heading off to college, he asked Seth to write down his advice. A letter to his son turned into a book for everyone. It's a heavily illustrated book about fear, bravery and doing work that matters.

Seth's background is in publishing and he was a book packager for 12 years, during which time he and his team wrote 120 books. These included almanacs, books on gardening, business and everything in between.

In 1999, he started writing books as a solo author. One person with a point of view. That's when things shifted for him, he says. "I didn’t say, 'What book do I need to write next, because I need to pay the bills?' I said, 'What do I care enough about saying to put myself through all the pain and suffering it takes to bring a book into the world?'

Seth's first "real book" was Permission Marketing which has his picture on the cover.

Listen to the show to discover why Seth believes all of his books are marketing books.

How Seth decides what to write when it comes to his books

Seth doesn’t think he has much say in what he chooses to write about. While he is very strategic in most elements of his life, his best writing is not strategic at all. "I start with an itch and the writing is my scratching of the itch," Seth reveals.

He starts a new book every few days, and some of them only last a paragraph or two, which is why it’s great to have a blog. If a book won’t go away, then he has to write it.

Seth believes most people shouldn’t look at the book business as a way to make a living. The book business is an organized hobby, and a fabulous way to bring ideas into the world and a great thing to leave behind.

For those who want to write a book to become a paid, professional author, Seth says, don't. Instead, think about using books as a generous way to spread ideas and earn trust.

Listen to the show to learn why Seth doesn’t discuss upcoming projects with his peers.

Why Seth decided to publish and distribute this book on his own

Since most people don't finish the books on their Kindle, Seth wanted What to Do When It's Your Turn to be only available on paper. He also didn't want people to buy just one copy of the book.

"If you buy 1 copy, I send you 2. If you buy 3 copies, I send you 5. If you buy 8 copies, I send you 12," he explains. "If you get an extra copy of a book, you have to give it away."

Since ideas are now spreading person to person and not top down, Seth wanted this book to be his experiment with horizontal publishing.