Marc's Musings

I once heard that the average book sells only about 500 copies. With the ease and variety of publishing options, and the ever-increasing number of bany books being published every year, this number seemed credible.

And as an author with a new book coming out, it was quite sobering. So I set a goal to sell 500 copies in my first year.

Today I get to say, “Thank you!”

My publisher just told me that Ask Without Fear! has sold 590 copies in it’s first four months!

With no major PR budget or ad push, I know this has been selling by word of mouth. Thanks for helping get the word out!

From the comments of readers, I know that the material in this book is:

• helping “normal” people get excited about fundraising and, even better,
• giving them the tools do it.

I know many of you have purchased a copy. And many more have recommended it to your friends. So once again, thank you!

[If you haven't had the chance, would you encourage Starbucks to use "Ask Without Fear!" in a celebration of National Philanthropy Day? Just send an email to bookbreak@wma.com or read my FundraisingCoach.com blog post. ]

Could I ask you a big Friday favor?

Would you help me get Ask Without Fear! into Starbucks stores?

My local baristas strongly encouraged me to try to get Ask Without Fear! into Starbucks in conjunction with the National Philanthropy days in November. The "grassroots" appeal of the book is perfect for the typical Starbucks customer.

Naturally, as a former barista, I loved the idea! I think it’d be awesome to have Ask Without Fear! featured in stores!

So I found the agency that arranges for book promotions. Their email is: bookbreak@wma.com. I’ve emailed a couple times but haven’t heard anything back.

WHY NATIONAL PHILANTHROPY DAY?
National Philanthropy Day is November 15 but groups celebrate it whenever it’s convenient to their previously scheduled events. So there’s a long "celebration" time for National Philanthropy. It also positions Starbucks as a proponent of philanthropy and partnering with the communities it serves.

WHY MY BOOK?
I wrote "Ask Without Fear!" to be a simple guide to inspire and equip normal people to start raising money for their favorite causes. Definitely a grassroots thing.

The book is available through distributors like Ingram and all the major retailers including Barnes & Nobles and Amazon. And the book has been featured and positively reviewed in national print publications as well as on the blogosphere.

Would you send them a quick email today encouraging them to do a "National Philanthropy Day" promotion featuring Ask Without Fear!? The email address is bookbreak@wma.com. Getting an email from you will really help!

Thanks so much!

If you look up the definition of “entrepreneur” in the dictionary, chances are Guy Kawasaki’s face is right there with it.

So I immediately responded when I saw him tweet about the top 5 things he’d learned as an entrepreneur.

Really good observations. Here’s a sample:

4. Ignore schmexperts. Schmexperts are the totally bad combination of schmucks who are experts–or experts who are schmucks. When you first launch a product or service, they’ll tell you it isn’t necessary, can’t really work, or faces too much competition. If you succeed, then they’ll say they knew you would succeed. In other words, they don’t know jack shiitake. If you believe, try it. If you don’t believe, listen to the schmexperts and stay on the porch.

Emily’s playing with Flock so she’s asked me to blog something so she can see it come up.

So here’s my blog post: would you be able to favorite this blog if you like it?

Great article in today’s MorningSentinel about keeping down gas prices by shopping locally. In the article, one person is quoted:

“The whole point of this is to make people stop and think,” Edgerton said. “One Sunday evening, I needed one item that was $4. I live in Bowdoin, and if I drove down to Topsham it would have, for me, been equivalent to a tank of gas. Or I could go to our little local general store and pay $1 more for the item, and my gas would cost about 75 cents.”

Exactly!

When we did our “gas pay down.” the gas station owner said people were driving huge SUV’s from other communities to get the gas thinking they were getting a bargain. 25 cents off was a big deal, but not if you get 10-12 mpg and drive 20-30 miles one way to get it!

The kicker? When they found out the gas was gone, they drove away without filling up. Cost of entire 40 mile round trip at 10 mpg on that day? About $15.20.

It’ll be a huge change for us in Maine to start thinking less regionally and more locally. But it will be great for our communities!

One final quote from the article:

Chain stores return very little of what their stores take in back to the communities where they operate, she said. A recent study in Maine by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance found that only 14 cents of a dollar spent at a so-called “big box” store remains in the state’s economy.

In contrast, the study found that independent retailers spend more than half their revenue locally. They bank at local banks, hire local accountants, advertise in local media and require many other local services that chains do not.

Just when I think I’ve drunk the Web 2.0 Kool Aid, people like Chris Brogan, Rob Hatch, or Chad Norman fill my cup up with more!

So today, I read a post from Chris Brogan on FriendFeed.

So if you’re on FriendFeed, I’m at: http://friendfeed.com/marcapitman

So Cuil got press today. It’s a search engine started by people that left Google. Supposed to be oodles better.

I wasn’t impressed.

Call me an egotist but when I searched on marc pitman, I didn’t come up in the first page but the obscure movie actor with my name did. I’ve worked hard over the last decade to make sure I’m in at least 50% of the top results. So it’s weird to not be in it at all. And “Marc A. Pitman” showed no results.

And for fundraisingcoach? Not even my own site www.fundraisingcoach.com came up! It comes up with obscure link farms and other questionable URLs.

So much for indexing billions of pages. And it seemed slow too.

Apparently, Cuil is picking up all the bottom dwellers the other search engines have long since learned to ignore.

Ike Pigott nailed it in a tweet just now:

You’re not missing much. Cuil is Google’s little cousin who’s into Goth but too chicken to get piercings. Google Dark.

I’m pleased to be sticking with Google, thank you very much.

Last weekend, I helped my parents set up their NetZero dial-up internet access. (It felt so 1990′s!)

The process went pretty smoothly…much to my mother’s irritation. (She’d spent 4 1/2 hours the night before trying to do it. Mom, you’ve gotta plug the phone cord into the laptop!)

But it also had example of the current (dismal) state of customer service.

NetZero noticed the program I was using was out of date and IE wasn’t loading properly. So they had a helpful screen showing me the link for the updated version and telling me how to install it.

But down at the bottom of the screen that shows up if you are having problems connecting to the internet, they said something like, “Need help? You can reach our free customer service by emailing us here at FabulousCustomerService@netzero.com.”

Sheesh. If I’m having trouble with the internet, how am I going to email!

It’s like when your internet connection is down so you call your ISP. Why do they have to point out that “most of the answers” to my questions are conveniently located at their website.

It doesn’t even feel better to yell, “If I could get to your website I wouldn’t be calling you right now!”

I sure am glad most of my life goes much more smoothly than this!

Kivi Miller tagged me on a meme passed on by Jeff Brooks.

I don’t usually play these. In fact, GMail knows to automatically delete forwarded emails.

But something about this intrigues me so here it goes.

Here is what I am supposed to do:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

The nearest book is Katya Andresen’s Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes.

Here are the appropriate three sentences:

And it cost us nothing.

Q: What’s a favorite example of your work in forging unusual partnerships?

A: The Union of Operating Engineers wanted to improve minority recruitument for jobs in the field and to raise the profile of the union and its members in our community.

Delightfully out of context, isn’t it? She goes on to tell of a partnership with them and Head Start.

Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causesis one of the best books I’ve read in a while. And I read a lot of books! Katya knows marketing and this book can help all fundraisers do what they do even better.

Like Kivi I think I’ll tag a couple Twitterati.

• Chad Norman
• Lisa Downing

I’ll also tag:

• my wife Emily
• the book’s author Katya.
• and my guest on today’s Ask Without Fear radio show, Gayle Roberts.

Playing a bit more with marcsentme.com.

Now I’ve added istockphoto.com and Netflix.

The list of cool resources is growing, but only with tools I both use myself and find useful!