Popular author to put books on the shelf

LOVELAND  – Marketing guru Seth Godin has written seven books, including best sellers such as “Permission Marketing” and “Purple Cow.”  And his latest project, “All Marketers are Liars,” is another hit.

He has developed the type of following that prompted one devotee to post a Web log with the title “What Would Seth Do?”  Godin’s personal blog is ranked among the 100 most-read in the world.

In short, he’s at the point in his career that anything he writes is going to be gobbled instantly by his hardcore fans.

So, it’s curious timing that Godin’s decided he’s going to stop writing books – after a fashion.

Godin, who spoke at Bixpo 2005 in Loveland on Sept. 15, disclosed to the Northern Colorado Business Report that his next book,  “The Big Moo,” due for release in October, will be his last in print format. In the future, Godin intends to go strictly with e-books.

“E-books just work better,” Godin said.

Work better, he contends, because his primary goal is to spread ideas, not to sell books.

In early September Godin released the e-book “Who’s There” – a sequel to his June 2005 e-book “Knock Knock” – and registered 75,000 downloads in one week.

“That’s more than read one of my books” over the past year, he said.

Plus, he likes the idea that a reader who takes the time to download a 40-page e-book will probably take the time to read it.

Furthermore, it’s a more efficient writing process. Godin said he spent two weeks composing “Who’s There.” The print book “All Marketers are Liars,” released in May, took him nearly a year to complete.

Godin’s in a unique position because he doesn’t make a living from his book sales. In fact, all proceeds from “The Big Moo,” which includes contributions from other business luminaries such as Mark Cuban and Tom Peters, are designated for charity.

The move to e-books is a case of Godin “practicing what he preaches,´ said Denny McCorkle, a professor of marketing at the University of Northern Colorado who specializes in Internet marketing.

“He’s big on electronic marketing and word-of-mouth,” McCorkle said of Godin, who was founder of Yoyodyne, an Internet-based direct marketing company that he later sold to Yahoo!

“His books are targeted mostly to businesspeople anyway, and businesspeople have laptops and wireless connections,” McCorkle said. “They can carry around in a computer 20 best-selling books. They can’t carry around in a briefcase 20 printed books.”

Rather than leaving his traditional readers behind, Godin might be “prodding them to jump ahead,” McCorkle said.

McCorkle speculated that the notoriety from Godin’s books  – even e-books that are disseminated for free – serves the author well. Certainly, Godin’s a hot commodity as a speaker. He makes about 50 appearances a year, and turns down about 400. He’s also a columnist for Fast Company magazine.

“The key is, he knows he has other revenues,” McCorkle said. “The more people who are familiar with him, the more he’ll make doing his presentations. It fits him perfectly.”

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