Every year I genuinely look forward to reading the lists of best and worst of the past year from media sources ranging from ESPN to The Wall Street Journal. Advertising Age, my favorite work-related read, takes it to the next level with its “Book of Tens.” This year I was pleasantly surprised and thrilled to have my book, The Next Evolution of Marketing, named as one of the “10 Books You Should Have Read in 2009.”
Making this list is a great wrap-up to only the third month in publication for the book, and represents a promising start to 2010. Every day someone stops me in the hallways or pings me on various social media to ask me how the book is selling. I don’t get a lot of information other than checking where it ranks on Amazon.com, so I usually answer that “it seems to be going well” based on a solid ranking and comparisons to other well-known marketing and advertising books.
When I look back on the three years it took to get this book to market and reflect on results so far, I look less at book rankings and think more about the people it has touched. Overall, I am most proud of the reaction of individual readers—the comments from old friends/clients such as Kevin Doohan who have watched this project from the beginning, to industry players/bloggers as diverse as Jim Tobin and George Parker, and especially the people around the world who have emailed or Twittered me out of the blue with glowing comments. I loved the book when I finished writing it about this time last year, but getting great feedback from others and hearing that you are influencing their thoughts and actions is priceless for anyone who creates content.
Every day I remind myself that the goal here is not to just sell books, but rather to be a catalyst for the next evolution of marketing, and to turn marketing into a noble profession. Through the work of our team and many others I genuinely feel that this is happening. We’ve got some big plans ahead in 2010 and I believe word of mouth about the book and the overall concept of Marketing with Meaning is only just getting started.
And as I look back at where we’ve come, I have to take the opportunity to thank you, dear readers, for being early adopters and incredible supporters of this movement. You are responsible for its success to date, and will lead the progress in 2010 and beyond. Let’s make it a great year, together.
