March 16, 2015

Seth Godin – It’s Your Turn Review

Seth Godin, What to do when it’s your turn – and it’s always your turn

What is most interesting about this book is not the words and ideas in it.

The content is up to the usual Seth high standard – inspiring, intriguing and instantly digestible. If you love reading Seth’s blog you’ll love reading this book too. It’s like coffee for the soul. It’ll taste warm and wonderful and it will jump-start you into running with the things that matter to you. The crude summary is this:

It’s your turn – stop making excuses and get on with it!

I think there are three things even more interesting about this book:

It’s less about marketing
What does a book look like?
How to multiply your sales and your audience

It’s Less about Marketing

For me, the signal was in Linchpin. Seth is and will always be a marketer. And, he has grown and evolved into a new role these days. As the book cover says: “He writes about treating people with respect, the changing economy and ideas that spread.”

As one of the most popular bloggers on the planet, Seth is a leader to many. And, he again points to the opportunity of the millennium that is now available to everyone:

It’s your turn!

With access to the tools of production – the internet, computers, blogging, social media – we now have everything we need to do the thing we love and earn our living from it. The big question is:

Are you going to take your turn?

This book will help you answer that and hold your hand to get you started.

TIP: Review your situation. Are you doing what matters? Have you taken your turn?

[Tweet “3 interesting things about Seth Godin’s It’s Your Turn – Thanks @tessnobile”]

What does a Book Look Like?

In his previous best selling books, Seth had mastered the short, concise book. Mostly they were in the range of 70-120 pages and occasionally topped 200. It was a smart model that gave the reader the best chance of actually finishing the book.

In this publication, he’s stepped things up again. This time the format is bigger, in full colour and closer to a magazine. It’s been designed as a coffee table book that you pick up and casually flick through grabbing a bite-size chunk to devour as you while a way a few spare minutes.

This is clever as it is probably gives the book it’s best chance of actually being read.

TIP: Design your next whatever so that someone will actually use/read it.

Multiply Your Sales AND Your Audience

The mirage of success is that it looks easy from the outside. And, yet, it takes countless hours building up that experience to make the magnificent look easy and everyday. Seth cut his teeth as a book publisher way before any of us had heard of him. In his own business he published hundreds of books, constantly looking for that edge, angle and idea that would land and generate a profit.

Since then he has mastered the process by creating 17 best sellers that have been translated into 35 languages. Spectacular! And, it was this previous background as a publisher that is the solid foundation for his fresh take on publishing today.

Traditionally, publishing has been a classic top down business. The author submits a manuscript at the bottom and this is passed upward to the editor who approves it or rejects it. The sales and distribution model followed the same top down pathway – the publisher creates the book, it’s shipped to the warehouse, then the retail store and finally the customer.

Today, as Seth has spoken about for many years, we can now go direct to the customer. And, that is precisely what he has done with this book. His horizontal publishing model is simple: Buy from me via my website.

Cleverly, he takes this one step further. Rather than buy one copy, buy a bundle. He has special offers when you buy 3, 8 or 96 copies. And, even if you buy a single copy you gain a second bonus book. The intention is to design the sales and distribution model to spread itself. Let the fans be the distributor. And, that is precisely how I came to read this book. It was a gift from Tess. A thousand thanks!

TIP: Next time you’re publishing something or even running an event, consider using the power of your existing audience to attract and grow a new audience.