Small Is the New Big



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Hardcover
323 pages
ISBN 9781591841265 Published Aug. 2006
Portfolio
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Small Is the New Big
And 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas
By Seth Godin 

Related Blog Posts
No Asshole Rule Wins Quills Awards (Business Category)
Posted Sept. 10, 2007 5:09 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Publishing Industry - 800 CEO Read Blog

The Quill Awards, which they self-describe as "first literary prizes to reflect the tastes of all the groups that matter most in publishing--- readers, booksellers and librarians", were announced this morning.

Bob Sutton's No Asshole Rule won the business category from the finalists of Small Is the New Big by Seth Godin, Women & Money by Suze Orman, Send by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, and Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough Jonathan M. Tisch with Karl Weber.

The awards ceremony takes place October 22nd.



2007 Quill Nominees
Posted June 8, 2007 9:58 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Publishing Industry - 800 CEO Read Blog

2007 Quill Nominees by Kate

At BEA, the 2007 Quill Award nominees were announced.

What titles were eligible?

Eligible titles for the 2007 Quill Awards were those published between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007. Nominees were chosen by the Quills/PW Selection Committee, comprised of Publishers Weekly editors, who drew upon industry expertise, PW starred reviews and PW Bestseller Lists to nominate five books in each of the Quills 18 categories. The PW staff's unique overview of the thousands of titles published each year helped to insure that nominated titles share the Quills' commitment to bring today's leading literature to the reading public.

Runners in the business world are:

  1. Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas

    Seth Godin; Portfolio


  2. Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny

    Suze Orman; Random House/Spiegel & Grau


  3. The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't

    Robert I. Sutton; Warner Business Books


  4. Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

    David Shipley and Will Schwalbe; Alfred A. Knopf


  5. Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience

    Jonathan M. Tisch, Karl Weber; John Wiley & Sons

For the full list, head here.



2006 Bestsellers (a little late)
Posted March 27, 2007 9:33 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog

Some folks started asking us for the 2006 bestsellers. Some how we forgot to do this right after the New Year, and I know many of you are dying to hear the results.

One note on methodology: We award points to a book's position on our monthly list, as well as the number of months it appears on our lists.

Without further ado...

800-CEO-READ's 2006 Best-Selling Books

  1. It's Your Ship by Michael Abrashoff (Warner Business)

  2. The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld (Harvard Business School Press)

  3. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne (Harvard Business School Press)

  4. Dealing With Darwin by Geoffrey Moore (Portfolio)

  5. The Ice Cream Maker by Subir Chowdhury (Currency)

  6. Blueprint To A Billion by David Thomson (Wiley)

  7. I've Seen A Lot Of Famous People Naked, And They've Got Nothing On You! by Jake Steinfeld (AMACOM)

  8. If Harry Potter Ran General Electric by Tom Morris (Currency)

  9. One Billion Customers by James MacGregor (Free Press)

  10. Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble (Harvard Business School Press)

  11. Satisfaction by Chris Denove and James D. Power IV (Portfolio)

  12. Treasure Hunt by Michael Silverstein and John Butman (Portfolio)

  13. Redefining Healthcare by Michael Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg (Harvard Business School Press)

  14. The Power to Predict by Vivek Ranadive (McGraw-Hill)

  15. The Millionaire Real Estate Mindset by Russ Whitney (Currency)

  16. More Than 85 Broads by Janet Hanson (McGraw-Hill)

  17. Don't Retire, Rewire by Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners (Alpha Books)

  18. Make Money, Not Excuses by Jeam Chatzky (Crown)

  19. Inside Every Woman by Vickie Milazzo (Wiley)

  20. The Cycle of Leadership by Noel Tichy with Nancy Cardwell (Collins)

  21. The Big Moo by The Group of 33, edited by Seth Godin (Portfolio)

  22. Small Is The New Big by Seth Godin (Portfolio)

  23. The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (Hyperion)

  24. Breaking The Bamboo Ceiling by Jane Hyun (Collins)

  25. Seven Secrets of Great Entrepreneurial Masters by Allen Fishman (McGraw-Hill)



The Dip: A New Book Coming From Seth Godin
Posted Jan. 22, 2007 3:45 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Big Ideas - 800 CEO Read Blog

During our October NYC trip, we heard there was a new book coming out from book machine called Seth Godin. Since there wasn't much to say beyond "Hey, Seth has a new book coming out!", we held off. Now with Amazon acknowledging the new book, we thought it was time to share more backstory on the book.

The name of the new book is The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When To Quit (and When To Stick) and the book is due out in May 2007.

It has been interesting to watch the evolution of this idea. You can see it first appear in 6/24/05 blog post about the four curves of want and get. Each curve described a pattern of adoption, but the real point Seth asks is "How do you know where you are?" He ends the post with this comment:

...how do you avoid killing something too early, or celebrating too early. And last, how do you know when to kill a dud?

Skip ahead five months and Seth posts Understanding Local Max. Here the concept has evolved. He is still asking the question about knowing where you are with the popularity of the idea. A different curve appears showing some initial success and then a waning followed by a twofold increase. He labels four points on the curve and talks about the conversation you would be have at each point on the curve.

Understanding Local Max was a popular piece for Seth. There are 45 trackbacks on the entry, which means the total number of links to the post were probably 10 times that. Seth included the piece in Small is The New Big titled The Local Max and How To Avoid It (interestingly, you won't find the four curves piece). We selected it for Polkas, Pyrotechnics and Point D's on ChangeThis.

Here is the cover art and catalog copy for The Dip:

The best business books change the way you look at something - forever. The Tipping Point, The Long Tail, and Purple Cow are simple books about simple topics...but they changed the way millions do their jobs.

Every new project (or career or relationship) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point - really hard, really not fun. At that point, you might be in a Dip (which will get better if you keep pushing) or a Cul-de-sac (which will never get better, no matter how hard you try). The hard part is knowing the difference and acting on it.

According to bestselling business author Seth Godin, what really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to give up on Cul-de-sacs while staying motivated in Dips. Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt - until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons.

This is equally true for entrepreneurs, pop singers, weightlifters, and car salesmen. Today's world rewards the people and organizations that are the best in the world at what they do. If you can be #1 in your niche, you'll get more than your fair share of profits, glory, and job security. But you'll never be #1 at anything without picking your shots very carefully.

The Dip is a short, fun-to-read book in the tradition of Fish, packed with powerful ideas and a graph that changes everything. It will forever alter the way people think about quitting - and success.


I'll end with this story. Seth was the subject of a cover story in the November/December issue of Selling Power. One story from the piece shows him foreshadowing and taking the opportunity to plant the idea again:

Big innovators fail all the time -- even Godin himself. In 1986, he was selling videotapes of a log burning in a fireplace. "So, if you want a fire, you could just put it on and watch it," he says. "I traded out some ads so I could run them in magazines."

To break even, he needed to sell 60, but he only sold 40. So he stopped selling them and sent everyone their money back, with a gift and a thank-you note. In the next two weeks, however he got 40 more orders.

"So, the big lesson of that failure for me was not that a fireplace on video is stupid. Well, it is stupid, but it was fun stupid. But the lesson was understanding when to quit."

As with all of his books, we can't wait to see the new one. What had been even more interesting is watching this one evolve.



ZDNet's Best in Business and Technology 2006
Posted Dec. 28, 2006 5:03 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog

Mitch Ratcliffe of ZDNet has complied his list of favorite business and technology books in 2006. He says:

This year's crop of business books, as usual, included a lot of me-too titles that were easily put down and forgotten after a few pages or chapters, because they contained little new, nothing thought-provoking. Downright crazy ideas are better than none, and challenges to the status quo invaluable, so don't shy away from shaking your colleagues' mental trees with a good book.

Here are the books that worked for Mitch:






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