Why don’t authors compete?
There's an apocryphal story of a guy who went for his final interview for a senior post at Coca-Cola. At dinner, he ordered a Pepsi. He didn't get the job.
And most packaged goods companies would kill to be the only product on the shelf, to own the category in a given store.
Yet, not only do authors get along, they spend time and energy blurbing each other's books. Authors don't try to eliminate others from the shelf, in fact, they seek out the most crowded shelves they can find to place their books. They eagerly pay to read what everyone else is writing…
Can you imagine Tim Cook at Apple giving a generous, positive blurb to an Android phone?
And yet authors do it all the time.
It's one of the things I've always liked best about being a professional writer. The universal recognition that there's plenty of room for more authors, and that more reading is better than less reading, even if what's getting read isn't ours.
It's not a zero-sum game. It's an infinite game, one where we each seek to help ideas spread and lives change.
It turns out that in most industries in the connection economy, that's precisely what works. People happily tweet each other's handles to their followers and give references to others that are looking for jobs. When a business that's comfortable not having 100% market share happily recommends a competitor, they're sending a signal about trust and confidence and most of all, about feeding the community first.
The competition isn't the person next to you on the web, or the store. The competition is none-of-the-above.
Along those lines: Here's an End-of-summer book roundup
The best thriller of the summer, juicy all the way through, is Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot. I'm relishing the audio version, forcing myself to go slowly, a chapter at a time…
Brian and Dharmesh are back with a new edition of their classic on Inbound Marketing.
David Meerman Scott delivers with a book that challenges a whole new industry: selling.
Shane Snow does a regression analysis to find out how some organizations (and people) manage to breakthrough in less time and make a big ruckus. He calls them Smartcuts.
As always, Sam Harris will make you think hard, about thinking.
Jenny Rosenstrach is back with more on creating a family dinner for those who don't believe they can. And my cookbook of the summer is from Oleana in Boston…
Steve Almond's football book will make fans angry. The question is: can you listen to an argument when you don't like where it's leading? And here's one about famous colleges.
Michael Schrage has written a book about innovation via 5×5, one that people will be referring to a decade now. Recommended for urgent pre-order.