Update On The Book (Because You Asked)

I hate to blog about things that I think will turn you off, and I try not to blog too much about me, or the book, or my conferences, etc. But I am getting a lot of e-mails and chat messages asking me how the book is doing. So here’s a quick update.

Let me put this into the context of you can do this, and it will greatly help develop your personal brand. In other words, don’t take this as a brag or whatever, but think about how having your own book will help you professionally.

• Last week I was in Austin, Texas, presenting to the Launch Pad Job Club – I wish there were more of these throughout the country, as they it is a stellar organization. I was introduced as “author of…” and the person introducing me said something like “it’s only 124 pages long and most of the front is page after page of endorsements about how great the book is!” I got a laugh out of that. Even my publisher told me that he’s never had as many endorsements as I have, and they are still rolling in.
• Yesterday I was on a radio interview (recorded podcast) with Central Valley Business Times, in California. The interview is 11 minutes, and pretty interesting (if I do say so myself :)). It’s on the front page right now but I’m sure that will change, so here’s the link to the story, with a link to the podcast at the very bottom. The only reason I got that interview was because my publisher put a press release out, and it got picked up by these guys. If you want to hear one of the most professional radio voices I’ve heard, go listen to it (not my voice, mind you :)).
• On Monday I got an e-mail from my publisher saying that I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? was in the 5,000’s on the Amazon ranking. I think this various by the hour, and I’ve seen it usually sit somewhere between 30,000 and 120,000 … so to be one of the top 5,000 books was pretty cool. But thanks to author Anita Bruzzese, and her advice, I will not be following the Amazon rankings 🙂
• Someone who I think is a hero, a superstar, a rockstar, a legend, Robert Sutton, who authored (parents, cover your kids eyes) The No Asshole Rule, which has an awesome story behind it and has taken the world by storm, sent me an endorsement. A really nice endorsement. When I replied that it was very, very nice, he wrote me a personal, sincere compliment about my writing. Yes, it was quite flattering, and yes, he’s won me over and I’m one of his biggest fans.
• I actually got a royalty check. No, I’m not rich, and it wasn’t a ton of money, but it was the first one. I’ve been conditioned to not expect any money so getting that royalty check was a nice surprise!
• I am way behind on linking to the bloggers who have blogged about it. But I’ll share one with you that I just saw. This one comes with some history, too long to explain. Let’s just say that John was instrumental in evaluating JibberJobber when there were too many rough edges, and he found a number of … flaws. Well, go read the Reinke Faces Life blog post about this book. It’s really quite a complement, as he ends his post with “From the fellow who recommends very very few things a (job)seeker should pay for, this is one of them.” I’m still shocked.
• When I hosted the Blogging for Business Conference on Monday I handed the speakers an “autographed” copy of my book. It was really cool to be able to give them something valuable (more than a Hallmark card, right?), and personal, as a thank you.
• I was invited to speak at the Personal Branding Telesummit, which is going to be the biggest thing to hit personal branding… ever! The requirement to be a speaker is to be … an author!
• I am in talks with a number of organizations that have reached out to me to speak to their groups… which is pretty cool considering I didn’t reach out to any of them.

Hopefully I’m working on you… convincing you to write your own book!

So, how is the book selling? I am not sure. I don’t ask Happy About for numbers. I have too many other things to work on, and watching this metric will only stress me out…. so to everyone who asks how it’s selling, my answer is “I don’t know.”

Still wondering what I’m talking about? You can get the book from Amazon, or Happy About (you can also get the ebook for around $12 from Happy About) to check it out.