10 Hot New Books from Book Rapper'd Authors

10 Hot New Books from Book Rapper'd Authors
Many of the authors of books we’ve rapped are serial offenders. They keep writing more books! So, here’s a list of new books from the authors of ones we’ve covered in previous Book Rapper issues. Note, the dates… a couple are so hot they haven’t been released just yet. Check the due dates. Note: I haven’t read any of these books. I figure if I liked their last one, these might be pretty good too… If you’ve read them, leave a comment with your thoughts.
Another note: All book links are non-affiliate links to Amazon.

Seth Godin - Linchpin
Previous Book: Meatball Sundae
Book Rapper issue: Marketing How-Now
New Book: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
Available: January 26, 2010.






Joseph Jaffe – Flip the Funnel
Previous Book: Join the Conversation
Book Rapper issue: Talk With Me
New Book: Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones
Available: February 8, 2010





Daniel Pink – Drive
Previous Book: A Whole New Mind
Book Rapper issue: How to Think Right
New Book: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Available: Now!





Malcolm Gladwell – What the Dog Saw
Previous Book: Outliers
Book Rapper Issue: Anti-Self-Help
New Book: What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures
Available: Now!




Ori Brafman – Sway
Previous Book: with Rod A. Beckstrom; The Starfish and the Spider
Book Rapper issue: Leaderful
New Book: with his brother Rom Brafman; Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behaviour
Available: Now!




Chris Anderson – Free
Previous Book: The Long Tail
Book Rapper issue: Make Money From Niches
New Book: Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Available: Now!





Timothy Ferriss – The Four Hour Work Week (Expanded)
Previous Book: The Four Hour Work Week
Book Rapper issue: The Four Hour JOLT!
New Book: The Four Hour Work Week – Expanded Edition – with 100 additional idea filled pages.
Available: Now!



Chip and Dan Heath - Switch
Previous Book: Made to Stick
Book Rapper issue: The Sticking Point
New Book: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
Available: February 16, 2010




Michael A Banks – On the Way to the Web
Previous Book: Blogging Heroes
Book Rapper issue: We Blog
New Book: On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders
Available: Now!




Barry Libert – Barack Inc
Previous Book: with Jon Spector, We Are Smarter Than Me
Book Rapper issue: The Bees Wees
New Book: with Rick Faulk, Barack, Inc.: Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign
Available: Now!



If you've read any of these books, add a comment and tell us what you think...

How to Share Book Rapper with your Audience

How to Share Book Rapper Issues with your Audience
Following from my previous post and the launch of our CC license, plus a prompt from Matt Hern, here's all of the Book Rapper issues thus far in one easy-to-share blog post.






















































PS: Thanks to James Tuckerman of Anthill for putting me onto Issuu.com

The 'Free' Debate

One of the fun questions that is often asked at dinner parties and in light-hearted interviews is “Who would you most like to have dinner with?”

The question conjures up the image of a bunch of important people sitting around the table and chewing the fat over a lively debate of world-changing ideas.

The internet is offered as a provider of all things wonderful and I’m pleased to say it can also ‘invite you to dinner with some great minds’. Or, at least let you eavesdrop.

Right now, there is a great debate on the internet… Ah, yes, literally, about the internet and on the internet.

Some of the great minds of digital technology, internet marketing, big ideas and the like are having a ‘free’ debate.

It all started with Chris Anderson of The Long Tail fame (Book Rapper Make Money From Niches) and Editor of Wired Magazine. He’s written a book called ‘Free’ and we discussed this in an earlier blog “Free Chris Anderson”.

Well, his book “Free: The Past and Present of a Radical Price” is to be released in the next couple of days (July 7). And, it’s likely to cause a storm – if it hasn’t already.

Malcolm Gladwell of ‘Blinking Tipping Points for Outliers’ fame, (Book Rapper’s Anti Self Help), suggested in a review in the New Yorker, he didn’t think ‘free’ would work.

Then along came Seth Godin, of ‘Tribes of Purple Cows eating Meatball Sundaes’ fame (Book Rapper’s Marketing How Now). He suggested in his blog post that Malcolm had got it wrong. ‘Free’ was not some philosophical position, just another marketing move that works.

It reminds me of one of the people I'd like to have dinner with, the late great Marshall McLuhan. We can have opinions about planes, trains and automobiles, but in the end, who cares? Technology or media does what it does. Opinions about it being good or bad matter little if it works.

A bunch of other smart people have now joined the ‘free’ conversation. One more chair at the dinner table please…

If you’d like to eavesdrop on some great thinkers thinking about a highly topical issue, then follow the threads in this post.

Alternatively, start with Tim Berry on the Huffington Post. He gives a good overview of the issue and adds a few more mouthfuls from some new dinner party guests.

So, if you want to have some great thinkers and wonderful debate at your dinner table, do it over the net. Virtual dinner parties are probably a good thing for your hips, thighs and waistlines too!

Join in today, it's free!

12 Must Read Business Books

Here's the Book Rapper 12 Must Read Business Books for April 2009...

Good to Broke: Why some companies completely mess things up and others don’t
Jim Collins

The Zero Hour Work Week: How to spend your time waiting for the Post-Global Financial Meltdown recovery
Timothy Ferriss

Book Yourself Silly: The fastest, easiest and most reliable system for getting more work than you know what to do with at prices you can’t possibly make a living from
Michael Port

The One-Minute Managers Guide to Wasting Time on Facebook
Ken Blanchard and Mark Zuckerberg

Tipping Points for Blinking Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell

Purple, Spotted Cows with Yellow Stripes, Football Boots and Long Tails
Seth Godin and Chris Anderson

The L Myth: Why most bosses don’t have a bloody clue about Leadership and what to do about it
Michael Gerber

The Vista Story: How I became addicted to my Apple Mac
Bill Gates
(Gates tells the real reason he quit as CEO of Microsoft.)

Feigned Optimism: How to fake interest in your current job until you get your next one
Martin Seligman

Out of My Whole New Mind: How my right-brain took over from my left-brain
Daniel Pink

The Hitchhikers Guide to your next Job Interview
Douglas Adams
(Includes a bonus chapter on taking the bus.)

Cheatonomics – How to bankrupt your company through Accounting Fraud
Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron

Let me know which ones we should RAP as our next book.

Free Chris Anderson!

No he’s not in jail. At least not that I know of...
Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail” is working on his next book “Free” – due out in 2009.

As is usual for most authors, a second book is going to be a continuation of their first in some form and Anderson follows this path.
The Long Tail (see Book Rapper Issue 1) showed that the economics of the web and digital products extends the potential for profit from mega-hits to micro-niches.
The previously unprofitable is now viable and there is virtually a market for everything.

‘Free’ zeroes in (sic!) on the web dynamics of digital distribution. If a product costs nothing to distribute then it can be given away to entice an audience.

The obvious question is… “If your product becomes ‘free’ then how do you make money?”

Here's four FREE strategies for you to consider...

1. The typical model is to provide a basic service for free and charge for the premium one. For instance, Skype offers free web calls and charges for calls to mobiles or landlines. The power and weakness of this approach is the ability to build a huge market through the free offer and have enough scale to earn a living from the 1% who do pay. If you don’t get sufficient scale you go broke.
2. The alternative is to presume that content is free and become a distributor instead. Think iTunes and call yourself an aggregator of content.
3. Google has a third strategy – that old favourite, advertising. Whilst searching is free people pay for more prominence in the hope of attracting more eyeballs.
4. A fourth model is shareware. Let people use your product and then they can pay if they want to. The web is a disruptive tool and ‘Free’ needs to be considered in your web strategy today. It may even change your entire business model. What are you giving away?
   

PS: No, I don’t think Anderson's book will be free, although it should be to prove his point. Seth Godin’s first book showed that ‘free’ works. Seth built a huge following by giving away his book in digital form and was still able to make some good sales when the book when physical some time later.

Some Resources
“Free” article as published in Wired Magazine
3 minutes of Chris Anderson on YouTube (video)
Cory Doctorow connects ‘Free’ and ‘The Long Tail’
Chris Anderson's blog

Book Rapper Hot Books Hot Trends 2008

Make Money From Niches
Derived from Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail
The Hot Idea: Digitalization has lowered the profit barrier meaning we no longer need to rely on creating big selling blockbuster products. Instead, small profitable niches become a safe and reliable way to riches.
Author’s blog: http://www.thelongtail.com/
Book Rapper: http://www.bookrapper.com/1_The_Long_Tail.html


How to Think Right
Derived from: Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind
The Hot Idea: The reliance on left-brain, logical, rational thinking is no longer enough to be successful in the Conceptual Age. Instead, we also need to be able to use our right-brain, emotional, empathetic, synthesizing brain.
Author’s website: http://www.danpink.com/
Book Rapper: http://www.bookrapper.com/2_Whole_New_Mind.html


Marketing Now-How
Derived from Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae
The Hot Idea: The new digital and online marketing tools will not be effective if applied to traditional advertising lead, command and control business structures. It’s time to reinvent to take advantage of them.
Author’s website: http://sethgodin.com/sg/
Book Rapper: http://www.bookrapper.com/3_Meatball_Sundae.html


The Four Hour JOLT!
Derived from: Timothy Ferris’s The Four Hour Work Week
The Hot Idea: Our live-to-work culture is obsolete. The Industrial Revolution’s 40 hour a week Deferred Lifestyle has reached retirement age. For the first time in 200 years you can re-frame your work ethic into a personal DIY ethic.
Book website: http://fourhourworkweek.com/
Book Rapper: http://www.bookrapper.com/4_The_Four_Hour_Week.html


Leaderful
Derived from: Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom’s The Spider and Starfish
The Hot Idea: The pendulum is swinging from centralized command and control organizations to decentralized ones. This elevates the importance of personal leadership and creates the demand for the ‘leaderful’ organization.
Book Website: http://www.starfishandspider.com/
Book Rapper: http://www.bookrapper.com/5_Leaderful.html


The Bees Wees
Derived from: Barry Libert and Jon Spector, We Are Smarter Than Me
The Hot Idea: Collaborative communities are the near future now. The power of crowds to innovate, provide customer service, make sales, provide finance and manage projects turns traditional organizations inside out.
Project website: http://www.wearesmarter.org/
Book Rapper: http://www.bookrapper.com/6_We_Are_Smarter_Than_Me.html


The Sticking Point
Derived from: Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick – Why some ideas survive and others die
The Key Idea: What’s your big idea? The typical expert spends longer coming up with their big idea than massaging it so it sticks in the minds of its intended audience. This book shows you how to package up your ideas so they’ll land and stick.
Book Website: http://www.madetostick.com/
Book Rapper: http://www.bookrapper.com/8_The_Sticking_Point.html

The Long Tail

Chris Anderson shows there is money to be made in very small niches.

The big shift has been in access to the Internet. Previously to make a good profit you needed high production volume and a best-selling product.

Now, through our PCs it’s easier to create things and the Internet gives us all access to global distribution. There is almost any market, for any product, somewhere. Let your customers find you on the net.

This book shows you how to reinvent your business with the three forces Anderson identifies as driving The Long Tail:

1. The Democratization of Production meaning that everyone has access to the tools of production,
2. The Democratization of Distribution meaning that everyone has access to distribution via the Internet and,
3. Connecting Supply and Demand meaning creating ways for customers to find the products you have for sale.

Get our RAP: Making Money From Niches