tribes - how about that audio book

So as you may remember, I signed up for Seth Godin's latest book Tribes. The book arrived last week. So what's the verdict?

• The marketing campaign was a blinder. The Ning site for the first 3000 people to sign up to the book - which was a bit of mess and kinda lost my attention but still a brave experiment.
• Sending you two copies of the book for the price of one to those 3000. One to give away. A nice(ish) gesture. It wasn't like it was ice cream or anything but that doesn't travel so well. But a fantastic idea in terms of spreading the word.
• Giving the audio book away for free. Some people bitched about this but so what? It's free!!! And it's different to the book so that's fine.

So I think SG has done a dashed good job of marketing by being quite nice to his readers and generating buzz. Full marks.

Now let's get to the actual book. SG writes cool, buzzy sentences. Even his paragraphs are quite good. Things start to unravel at the chapter level and the final result is not really a book as many traditionally might think of it. There is no line of argument rather there's a rant that riffs around tribes and leadership with lots of case studies - a statistically improbable number of which are based in New York restaurants. I'm not finished yet but I'm getting a similar feeling to reading "Purple Cow" last year. There is an idea here but it feels more like a talk thats been worked up (really worked up) into a short bookette. I suspect the audio book would actually be better because then you might lose yourself in the momentum of the SG verbiage. Maybe he should charge for the audio book and give the paper one away for free.

I don't think that SG was always like this as a writer - I mean Permission Marketing felt like a, you know, proper book. Or are proper books, like, soooo 20th century? Plus the prose has a bit of a Tony "Awaken the Giant Within" Robbins feel to it. Is there going to be a 5-day, 5-figure seminar series off the back of this?

As for the idea? That (informal) tribes are more important than formal organisations? That leadership comes from all over the place? It's not a bad idea by any means and there are parts that I absolutely agree with. But it didn't feel that new to me. Maybe it's "Here Comes Everybody" if you have ADHD.

So Seth Godin. Genius marketer. Good blogger. Book writer? Not so much anymore...

what's wrong with shameless self-promotion?

So Seth Godin* has posted a comment where he says he doesn't think of the tribes thang as "shameless self-promotion". I don't think there's anything wrong with shameless self-promotion. Provided it's done well. If you give people stuff that is useful for them then it's fine. Bad shameless self-promotion is another matter. Taking attention ("lookatmememmeme") and giving nothing back is one of the surest ways to earn enmity short of calling someone's mother a street-walker.

There may also be a cultural issue here. Seth is American. I am English. What looks like shameless self-promotion to me probably looks like diffident introversion to him.

*Well I assume it's him. On the internet no one knows you're a lactose intolerant scuba diver.