Stephendann.com

Seth Godin complaining about someone turning a profit from book writing is a bit like Karl Marx bemoaning the onset of socialism.

Pick apart a post time
1. A textbook author in Toronto made enough money from his calculus textbook to afford a $20 million house. This is absurd on its face.
Why? A specialist product with a distinctive market should be profitable. Surely the amount of money can’t be the issue – after all, Seth Godin and cohorts banked USD$30 million for selling Yoyodyne to Yahoo back in 1998. One millionaire wouldn’t begrudge another millionaire would they? Aside: Funny how a post about ostensibly about marketing texts cites a calculus text as proof marketing texts are overpriced. And cites it in a way evocative of the “I made a million from Google” adverts. Compare also: Mark this down as another job for the new economy: someone who can collate, amplify and leverage the work of writers and turn it into cash with the complaint about someone who did, and did it rather well, and did it in the old economy as well.

2. They are expensive
True. First book cited is the USD$50 326 page Lamb, Hair and McDaniel paperback edition of Marketing 3.0. The second book cited is the USD$150 Kotler and Armstrong Marketing (12th Edition) which is 736 pages and in hardback. Fair point about the price of the books. They’re rather expensive, and it’s something publishing industry ought to consider – were the publishing industry not following either the harvesting method where Price should rise with value delivered. As your work spreads and your reputation increases, you should be able to charge more, not less.. Kotler being one of the foremost authors in the field of marketing with a track record approaching 40 years, constant updates and contemporary techniques including the ultra-high risk move into adapting commercial marketing for poverty reduction (launched with Nancy Lee in 2008). Seth Godin says a good reputation says you can charge more, not less. What if the textbook industry positions a book on marketing by the legendary Philip Kotler as a premium product since Seth defines them asexpensive variants of commodity goods. A book by Kotler as an expensive variant of a commodity good? Why, that’s outlandish that these publishing industry types should follow such a trend espoused by Seth Godin

3. They don’t make change
This is fascinating. The assumption underlying the statement is that a student comes to a subject already knowing the subject matter, and that mere exposure to the constructs of the course in a linear fashion (or nonlinear) doesn’t result in a state change between the pre-course and post-course student. Simply put, reading a book induces change – mere acquisition of knowledge requires the reprocessing, categorisation and fitting of the new content into your personal memory schema. Change happens whether you intend it or not. To say that a book that’s read doesn’t induce change is wrong.
Sub points
Textbooks have very little narrative.
Narrative being (and I wikipedia quote) a constructed sequence of events with a relatively linear path (it can vary). Sure, I might be taking this critique to heart given my books have text crossreferences (I write print books with the structure of hyperlinks in mind), sequences, and I flag the direction of the content to indicate the building blocks in Chapter 4 are necessary to understand before application in Chapter 9 (and in Chapter 9 I point backwards to the conceptual building blocks in Chapter 4). Maybe it’s also the fact that the CB text I used this semester had the entire narrative structured around a model of consumer behaviour, the social marketing text (Kotler and Lee) had a cohesive structural narrative of the development of insight into the pieces of the puzzle required to assemble a social markeitng campaign… Unless by narrative, you mean something non-narrative like in nature.

They don’t take you from a place of ignorance to a place of insight. Instead, even the best marketing textbooks surround you with a fairly non-connected series of vocabulary words, oversimplified problems and random examples.
Must.not.take.this.personally. Introduction to Marketing, 2004, ongoing continuous case study of Eagle Boy’s Pizza. Linear narrative that linked together the concepts from the chapters into the single story line in the assessment, support material and case study.
non-connected series of vocabulary words
Meatball sundae, the big moo, purple cow, ideavirus, permission marketing, big red fez…
oversimplified problems
Simplified problems exist in text books. This is why flight simulators let you practice simplified problems of flying airplanes. Simplified problems are teaching moments. Simplified problems take the existing wildly complex world and break it down into manageable sections. Which, y’know, is how we learned a lot of things like “sneezing ideas“.
They’re out of date and don’t match the course. The 2009-2010 edition of the MKTG textbook, which is the hippest I could find, has no entries in the index for Google, Twitter, or even Permission Marketing
Can’t prove this one way or the other since I don’t have MKTG3.0 handy, and it’s not indexed on Google Books yet. I find this comment to be very obtuse though – Seth can’t find reference to Permission Marketing (1999) in a specific 2009 book, and he complains the books are out of date? Long bow to draw, and carefully worded (I first though he’d said that all the 2009-2010 books lacked these three terms). Since I can’t validate MKTG3.0, I went for the next best thing – the highly inexact science of Google Books (limited database that it is), and turned up the following 2009 books with Google, Twitter and permission marketing. Permission marketing is cited in a 2009 textbook. Google has been cited by Intro texts at least once. Like in the earlier edition of Lamb, Hair and McDaniel that Seth quoted as the $50 textbook. While we’re at it – say hello to Alan Charlesworth’s 2009 textbook on Internet marketing. It mentions Twitter as well.

This is an area where the lag between manuscript and physical copy is an issue. It’s serious problem that’s beset the industry – I’m writing away at my book at the moment, cramming in content about Google Wave, Bing, Xbox360, reading the news off E3 about potential replacements for the Wii, and as good as I can be at keeping my blog reader up to date – I hand off the manuscript in July 2009, and it doesn’t hit the shelves until 2010 at the earliest date. This post hits the ‘tubes seconds after I write it, PDFs go live in minutes after clearing spell check. Time lag is the issue, and that’s something he should have focused on – not a carefully crafted attempt to wipe the entire textbook industry on the basis of a single book. Plus, I can’t shake the amused look at being upset that nobody cited Permission Marketing (1999) as proof that the textbook is out of date.

4. They don’t sell the topic.
Agreed. That’s largely because they’re bought after someone’s already bought into the subject at the gatekeeper role. This is about the most accurate and serious point we both share – textbooks are designed to look pretty with pictures and colour without bringing the sense of life to the subject matter. The books we’ve written that have scored well with students on the readability have been criticised by academics for being lightweight. The sense that education is SRS BSNS is a barrier to putting the life into the content. It’s a broken area, and one where we need high levels of persuasive structural change that doesn’t conflate “difficult to read” with “educational”.

5. They are incredibly impractical. Not just in terms of the lessons taught, but in terms of being a reference book for years down the road.
This is going to be interesting. Textbooks are specific purpose devices designed for encapsulated environments. They have a functional lifespan for the duration of the subject (that’s a problem in its own right), yet it’s also a functional version of Seth’s advice for Needle in a Haystack marketing. First, really solve the problem – produce a device that aids the teaching of specific content over a defined period (market = lecturer, administration) that enables the completion of the course (market = student) at varying levels of success. Second, make it a habit. Look at the textbook publisher market, and there are few, if any, subject specific solution providers that just publish the one book. Most have wide ranging publication lines that replicate the same solution (textbooks) as a habit to create those thousands of solutions.

Sub point attack.
In a world of wikipedia, where every definition is a click away, it’s foolish to give me definitions to memorize.
There’s several levels of error in this statement, starting with ideavirus, sneezing, big moo, purple cows, The Dip and any other book Seth’s ever written – definitions to memorise are building blocks of language, and part of his stock-in-trade. Twitter is a definition to memorise, as is wikipedia, google and permission marketing. It’s a paradoxical situation that Seth’s anguish at the lack of these definitions in the book is followed with a complaint about definitions. Wikipedia isn’t always a click away. Language and learning count for a lot, and as a person who trades in catchphrases and specific terminology, I find Seth’s argument ill-considered. It’s like throwing out the dictionary during primary school because we don’t need to learn the meaning of the words if we can…um…that word that means looking something up with that search engine. Yahooing! Binging? Wikipediatric?

Where is the context?
Where is the context for the physics diagram or the math equation? Where is any of the context of education? The class room. Education is a simulation.

When I want to teach someone marketing (and I do, all the time) I never present the information in the way a textbook does
Yes you do. In fact, you’re quite prone to the mini-case with double or triple bullet point structure. Case study, application, application. I found the structural approach of “The Dip” and “Ideavirus” to only be missing the end of chapter questions for their text book like nature. Structured linear narrative of example surrounding a single core concept a book by Seth Godin and a text book make.

I’ve never seen a single blog post that says, “wait until I explain what I learned from a textbook!”
Just because it amuses me to do this – I tried a keyword search for ““learned from Seth Godin’s book”. It’s another one of those phrases that make no sense when you try to dissect it for an answer. I can’t recall ever hearing “Wait until I explain what I learned from” as a phrase – largely because it’s a signifier of internal dialogue. I’ve seen people discuss about what they’ve learned from a book, I’ve seen lessons from books slides on Slideshare .

Now down to bug hunting the solution presented;
The solution seems simple to me.
I’m not letting this go to the keeper (I should, but still) – a post that complains about simplistic problems offers simplistic solutions?

Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online. (it’s part of their job, remember?)
So many levels of false, such little space left to falsify the argument.
1. Not part of our job. Seriously, not actually part of our job. Misleading statement which misunderstands our contemporary workplace.
2. Most universities already own the IP we produce whilst on the clock for them. ANU recently revoked a section of the IP contract to allow us to assign the intellectual property rights of our papers to third parties, and had to restore that limited right when it was pointed out that we couldn’t publish in mainstream journals if they didn’t give us the right to forsake our rights to corporate publishers. We didn’t actually get to keep the IP in the powerpoint slides we create to use in our class rooms, and we can be formally reprimanded if we release the University’s property to the public domain.
3. There’s a subtle difference between allowing us the choice to free publish (as is Seth’s option with ideavirus and other CC licensed work) and forcing us to handover the work without compensation. I don’t believe that Seth Godin intends to handover every book for free (after all, it’s part of his job, right?).

When you have a class to teach, assemble 100 of the best pieces, put them in a pdf or on a kindle or a website (or even in a looseleaf notebook) and there, you’re done.
Can I begin by saying that this already exists? Been there, done that, handed out the USB drive full of data. As for this as a serious suggestion in a post that criticises current textbooks for their lack of narrative? For being random clusters of examples assembled together with no sense of continuity?

You just saved your intro marketing class about $15,000
Assuming that 300 students purchase $50 or 100 purchase $150 text. And that no printing costs, Kindle cost or other costs are incurred. Funnily enough, I had students complain about the costs of the USB device I provided because they were printing out elements of the course at far below economy of scale prices.

Any professor of intro marketing who is assigning a basic old-school textbook is guilty of theft or laziness
Oh, troll bait conclusion. Sorry, not biting.

Here’s the problems we have in the industry

The Australian gravely intones that “Online ephemera lacks content to create communities” and declares twitter to be a passing fad. Then there’s a copy and pasted discussion of the failing of modern television. Topped and tailed with a reference to Twitter. Followed by a broadside at the Crikey website since they suggest the death of newsprint, followed by praise for the Melbourne Herald Sun‘scirculation, and an argument that newspapers create community (which is apparently why Twitter will fail).

I mark a lot of student essays in my day job, and I can spot a recycled idea from a different paper showing up in the hope of making the word count.  Did the journalist really compare apples with a Summer’s Day?  Seriously, for the highlight of offtopic rambling, the anti-Twitter argument detours for a paragraph about faked reality TV and scripted drama before concluding that  “Some 30 years on, Callan is still available on DVD and the popularity of Spooks and Slumdog will probably last for decades – unlike the ephemera that now sets twitters tweeting.”

Dear Sir.

You appear to misunderstand the nature of the ephemera.

More specifically, you appear to be criticizing a platform designed for emphemeral comments for containing emphemeral comments.  Do you often find yourself upset at the coffee flavour of your morning coffee?  Seriously, it’s a short messaging system of disposal messages. It is the ephemera of the interent by design, by purpose, and criticising it for doing what it does well is to misunderstand the nature of electronic small talk.

Since we’re at it – Twitter users are a group of people who share a common set of interests, talk to each other in a semi informal cohorts, and quite often live in the same geographic areas (hence the Regional Social Media Breakfasts, the Regional Twitter User Brigades etc).  There’s a word for that. I believe it’s called community. Something that social media, Twitter and newspapers achieve in their own ways. Since community isn’t zero sum, the contribution of newspapers to community does not mean other approaches cannot or do not provide their own input.

Yours sincerely

$tephen

PS: The news.com.au social media sharing button seems to have a few problems. Dead links, malformed URL, or corporate takeovers.  But that’s okay, at least you didn’t have a post to Twitter button for your anti-Twitter column.

6 links from 15 failed to load from the social media sharing buttons

The Celebrity Business model has to be a near perfect fit for twitter.

• Celebrities are a broadcast model who are used to acquiring, seeking and maintaining attention
• Celebrities have uneven following/follower ratios in real life  (people they know versus people who know about them)
• Celebrities are used to be reduced to soundbytes (quotable film moments, red carpet interview, press releases)
• Celebrities are used to having to make short statements that are linked to larger work elsewhere. In fact, some celebrities turn into the human TinyURL for causes, films or character portrayals.

In short, celebrity suits Twitter because they’re using very similar message structures, business strategies (relevance versus frequency versus overexposure) and when the professional face to face social networkers meet the social networking technology with the best fit for their existing model – well, it’s a perfect storm.

The downside for the social media industry (and the social media marketers) is the sudden rise in competition from the professional social networker circuit. It’s one thing to proclaim great advice on how to be a social media guru (oh how I loath that term) when you’ve got a four or five figure follower count – until Ashton Kutcher makes a mockery of you with the seven figure follower profile.  That’s even before Oprah tries out the technology and completely reshapes the top end of the playing field (of course, I noticed a volume of “I was here before Oprah” that was strangely louder than the “I was here before Kutcher“. Kutcher’s the one who had a race to a million users with CNN.)

Still, it’s been fun, and my Twitter circle is still as valuable the day after Oprah as it was the day before.  Maybe because I don’t mind that celebrities have phones, eat food, use the internet and do other mundane things that I do – like play with new technologies on the internet.

Counter intuitive management policies versus the people who try to give you money. A brief list of things that bother this marketer when attempting to exchange money for goods and/or services.

By the Clock Closing. The HR enforced handover times that ignore queues of customers are incredibly counterintuitive to the marketer.  Woolworths and Coles seem to excel at this particular form of customer service failure – clock strikes Arbitary O’Clock, and the checkouts are shut. That people are in those queues trying to buy stuff seems irrelevant to the shutting down of the points of sale.   Same goes for the stores who put the Management admin needs ahead of selling goods. Those five staff who are busy on administrative tasks at when there are massive queues of people can’t leave their make-work tasks to serve paying customers without penalty.  Surely those tasks can’t be as vital to the organisation’s survival as revenue from sales?

Solution: Place some faith in the line staff. Trust them to work a little later than the designated shift-over, and reward that trust with recognition of the overtime in cash or time off elsewhere.  Note: if you keep having staff work overshift, you’ve probably understaffed that timeslot. Learn from the actual market behaviours.

Abort, Restock, Fail: There’s a trend in Australian retailing to see a full shelf of stock as the sign of a successful business, rather than to see a shelf of stock as a sign you need to sell more stuff.  In the fast moving consumer goods area, if there’s a product that sells out quickly, and frequently, and leaves a yawning gap on the shelves, you can feel safe in the knowledge the store will remove that item from sale.  It’s really visible in the specialty health food area, where you almost have to leave a ration of goods for the store to feel comfortable that this is neither profitable nor desired by customers.  Same deal seems to apply to small sized shoes, large size bras, or clothing for women that isn’t hideously uncomfortable.  I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve had a salesperson earnestly look at me and say “Oh we used to stock those, but they sell out so quickly we stopped ordering them” without the slighest trace of comprehension of the inverted logic.

Solution: If it sells really well, and really quickly, how about ordering more of those, and less of the shelf furniture that doesn’t sell?  If it sell faster than the maker can produce it, you might need to up the price to slow the sales (if you must), set up backorders or generally do what it takes to get more of the product people seem very keen about rewarding you with money for having in your store.

Quarter To Shutdown:  Service industries (mainly gyms) take note – if the gym is open from 5am to 9pm, pay your staff to do the cleaning after 9pm and the set up before 5am.  The number of times the gym staff effectively shutdown the gym at 8.30 by powering down the electronics, switching off the music, TV and lights, and putting the “GTFO” on the customers is more common than the number of times the place is still as functional at 8.55pm as it was at 8.55am.  The bit that the management never seem to understand is that if you make me feel uncomfortable around 8.30, then I have to consider whether it’s worth going to gym at 8pm (since the mythical 9pm close is really much earlier). Slowly but surely, you’ll train the customers into thinking any time after 7pm is a waste of effort, and then wonder why all those people who used to pay your gym membership rates went away.

Solution: Stop being such a tight bastard with the payments.  If 15 or 30 minutes of staff time after the venue is closed will kill your business, get a better accountant and redo your price structure. Or  move the official closing time back 30 minutes, continue paying the staff for the 30 minutes after-new-closing time, and stop the customer feeling like they’re getting booted out because they’re a nuisance.

See also

• airport cafes that close before the last flight leaves and/or lands (here’s a hint – those big boards with the “LAST FLIGHT” signs are your cues);
• university services that close after 2pm when the last class finishes at 9pm (26 weeks of published timetables. It’s no secret when and where classes are held); and
• any genius who sets automatic systems to lock down before the store’s trading hours are over (learn to tell the time).

A few weeks ago, I was speaking at BarCamp Canberra. I mentioned that the early adopter/innovator phase of the internet was on the way out, and the next way of early majority was inbound.

Ashton Kutcher might just be the pinnacle point of the early adopters who usher in the massive wave (34% of a market, compared to innovator 2.5 and early adopter 16%). With the arrival of the Million Twitter Follower Contest, CNN and A2K’s measuring contest (get a ruler and a room people), and the impending @Oprah possibilities (which strike me as the potential for unmitigated levels of direct awesome in this space), we’re over the obscurity hill and into new territory.

Part of this new territory is the TwitterListener who picks up an account to follow others without having any real desire to post anything themselves – if Twitter wants to produce a monetized area, they should look into an paid placement / advertising sponsored Twitter Reader Client (iPhone, PC, Mac) that just draws the streams of content with offering any capacity to reply or post beyond an autoretweet/share function. There’s a new generation of twitter users who want to follow, to listen and to observe without participation. Time to accommodate their needs alongside our own early adopter broadcast models.

Of course, the amusing thing in this entire proceeding was that I distinctly recall a cohort of geek early adopters (A) bemoaning that nobody knew about Twitter. Right now, I’m amused to see a number of geek early adopters (B) bemoaning that too many people know about Twitter (Note: A and B have overlap in C, but A != C and B != C)

The only thing worse than being tweeted about is not being tweeted about at all

The other consideration with Ashton Kutcher, Oprah and famous rich people showing up on Twitter is that people who have cash, and enjoyment of Twitter are around when the technology sector angel investors start to dry up. This could be a really useful thing for a company like Twitter to have some deep pocket users if the well starts to run dry.