Today begins Great Powers' first full week of sales
Sunday, February 8, 2009 at 4:06AM Officially, my first full week starts today and run through Saturday. All the books sold to date get piled into this first full week, thus the advantage of starting last Thursday and thus the advantage of any advance sales.
So, if any readers were contemplating purchases, now is the time to make them. If you thought about buying additional copies for friends or anybody you know who would like the book, now is the time to make them.
Now is the time to send emails to anybody you know who you think would be interested in a book like this. Now is the time to talk the head of your company into buying a dozen copies for all the senior execs who need this mid-career education-in-a-book. Now is the time to fire off that copy to the person in your company who sets up talks by outsiders.
People will often ask, What can I do to help spread the vision?
Well, it doesn't get much easier than right now.
If you have a blog, use it. If you're on Twitter, tweet it. Wherever you roam, take advantage.
People are always telling me that I should do as much as possible to spread this word. Well, I do. I write non-stop. I keep up a grueling national and international travel sked, giving some talks for great money but a whole lot more for not so much and plenty for damn near nothing. I give these talks mostly to military installations because I know they don't have much money and yet I think it's an important thing to do--important enough to be away from my family a bit more than half the year.
This isn't about making me any more money, because--honestly--it won't. It's about keeping the work in a certain category of respect which allows opportunities to spread it further.
You come to this blog and find tons of stuff everyday. I take a big chunk of my day to make it happen, and then pay Sean to keep it all rolling and neat and organized. I rack up some big early sales and I'll get a bonus from Putnam, which will be enough to pay Sean for around a year. That's how I keep this enterprise rolling while being the sole provider for six-going-on-seven (we're just sending our dossier to Kazakhstan).
Do not send ideas of what to do. Between Sean and my two Jenns and my two Steves and everybody at Putnam, we are looking under every possible rock and making every possible plea. If you have an idea, act on it yourself.
Because these are the seven days to make it happen.
I am not an inside man. I am not particularly well-connected. I don't get the automatic pass. And as far as the establishment is concerned, I have never belonged. I am just too unconventional, too showy, too iconoclastic, too not like them.
It is my audience that grants me all credentials--all these invites to speak, all those links to posts, all the word-spreading acts.
You guys made me with the first book and you've invested a lot in me since. Now it is time to cash in on that investment. I put everything I had into making this book work, and it does. And it's well-timed. And it's much-needed in these dark days.
So help me out here again.
Reader Comments (4)
Actually Tom that is an understatement. You are still supposed to be in the penalty box for that Esquire article.
The penalty box is akin to a virtual fence politicians use to protect themselves from criticism from officers whom they know are smarter than them. It is easier to blame you when they can't blame an officer with more credibility than the politicians making decisions.
Tom's Great Powers presentation w/Q&A is being filmed, suitable for posting on your blog, social networking platform of choice, or send link to your friends.
Click here for more info.
If any of you have not bought the book or if you have and not looked in the acknowledgments, be it noted, that Tom named everyone who has been part of the above group.
That's every 180+ of you!
In my recollection, this is the largest named group of contributors to a body of work that I have ever seen.
We all should be humbled, that our views were heard, considered and incorporated in making Tom's vision possible.
Now is the time for all of us to put our voices together and help Tom to introduce this important dialogue to a public largely unaware of our past and unsure of our future.