In 1992, I had the pleasure of meeting Guy Kawaski. He had recently published Selling the Dream, and I was an IBMer responsible for coordinating a networking software conference. We wanted him to keynote our conference and share his lessons around guerrilla-style marketing. I don’t remember his exact response when we first exchanged emails, but it was like the following:
“Seriously, you want me to come and talk to a bunch of IBMers? You do know that my job at Apple was to wage war with IBM?”
Well, the conference was a huge success, and Guy was a big reason why. His talk created a huge buzz, and for a bunch of rouge marketing guys, a feeling of “we are in this together.”
Fast forward twenty years, and my path is once again crossing with Guy. This time, it isn’t face-to-face but via a new book he has written called APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur.
This is perfect timing from my point of view. While Guy has written several books that I find motivational, this book is much more specific, with practical advice for people with aspirations of writing, publishing, and promoting their own book. In fact, of the 29 chapters in APE, 22 of them have titles that begin with “How to.”
As the subtitle of the APE suggests, the book is broken into three primary subsections: one related to authoring, one related to publishing, and one to the entrepreneurial or promotional component. And as is typically the case with Guy’s books, he writes candidly from his own experiences and challenges in each of the areas. Guy writes:
“A successful self-publisher must fill three roles: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur—or APE. These roles are challenging, but they are not impossible— especially if people who have done it before explain it to you. And that’s what Shawn [coauthor] and I will do in the book you are now reading. Our goal is to help you succeed as a self-publisher as quickly and easily as possible.”
In spite of what looks like a marketplace undergoing massive dislocation, APE has done more to motivate than to dissuade me to take the next steps. Thanks Guy Kawasaki!
