I’m delighted to tell you that I just got a contract to write a book: WWGD? – What Would Google Do?
I’m reverse-engineering Google, taking the lessons and rules I find in their singular success in the internet economy and applying them to other companies, industries, and institutions. And then I’ll pontificate about the greater importance of Google and links on society and life.
The book will freeze-dry onto paper many of the ideas we explore here. And I’ll continue to explore them here as I write. I decided to approach the book/blog relationship that way, rather than putting up finished chapters and asking you to react to them. It’s more interesting and more valuable to me to have a discussion about our experiences as part of the process. So I’m grateful, as always, for your sharing your thoughts, perspective — and corrections. That’s one of the lessons in the book: It’s a gift economy.
Considering all I’ve written here about the digital future of the book, it is ironic that I’m killing trees. I blame Seth Godin as my nudge-muse, who sat me down at lunch sometime ago and said I was a fool not to write a book because it is a vehicle to get ideas out (and get speaking engagements in). Seth’s only written three or four books since he gave me that advice. So I’m slow to pick up. But it’s good advice.
Of course, I’ll also be applying Google rules to books in the book.
The book was bought by Collins, an imprint of Harper-Collins. My editor is Ben Loehnen and my agent is Kate Lee at ICM. It’ll be out next spring.
Now I have to get to work.
Oh, I was hoping you were going to do that book on startups we spoke about. I am looking forward to that one! I’ve even got a title “The Entrepreneurs Guide to the Galaxy”
Congrats, Jeff. Great news.
I think Hugh MacLeod would describe a book as a social object. Something that allows you to start and have more conversations and richer conversations. All the very best with it. Will you reverse engineer PR companies by the way? We could do with some help.
Congratulations, Jeff.
There’s something about publishing a book that changes the way that people think about you and your work. And it’s a uniquely gratifying, interesting, frustrating and enlightening process.
Fantastic idea getting your readers to write your book. Looking forward to the revenue share model
Ironic to be using dead tree technology to explain its antithesis.
Examining your choice might be instructive. (I mean having an internal discussion with yourself.)
Possible reasons:
1. Publishing books is needed if one is to move forward in an academic career.
2. Gaining status among one’s professional peers in non-academic areas.
3. Revenue from the sale of the book.
4. Ego boosting from the media attention and interviews after it is published.
5. Other reasons I haven’t thought of.
I’m aware of two academics (both at the end of the careers) who have chosen to “publish” their books online as PDF files. In one case the book has reached about twenty times more readers than a prior conventional effort. Their goal seems to be primarily to get their ideas before as large a public as possible and making their work available online and free was seen as the best approach.
Combining the online version with a demand print version (for a price) allows those who need a hard copy to do so as well.
Congratulations on the book deal! It will be interesting to see how you re-imagine some industries … I reckon you’ll have a lot to say about media given your punditry here. Now if only people would listen …
Robert,
Lots of reasons.
I am making money and having quit the old day job, that helps! I find in writing my Guardian column that it helps to freeze-dry ideas and discussions; it can improve my thinking. I hope I reach some new people. I already get my ideas out here on the blog; don’t need a PDF to do that and, indeed, PDFs suck. I hope that with marketing, the book will reach people this blog doesn’t reach. I hope it will lead to speaking gigs. It doesn’t hurt in the academe. And, yes, I have a helluvan ego.
jeff
Sounds like a great way to re-think.
Thanks.
Jeff:
But as you constantly remind us, books, newspaper articles and written blogs are not where the young go for information.
I see you mainly reaching an audience of your peers though this avenue. This may not be such a bad idea, since it appears many are clueless about the changing nature of information dissemination, but do you have anything to say to the young pioneers? If so, how do you expect to reach them?
I first though the initials stood for What Would God Do. I guess I was close.
Good luck with writing the book, Jeff!
Also, I don’t know if you saw this:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple
Ta,
Ben
Jeff,
Congratulations! I look forward to hearing how it progresses and your experiences in the publishing world.
Aloha,
Ben Casnocha
Congrats on the deal. Your writing is so sensible and readable that you shouldn’t feel guilty about killing trees. Rather, save the guilt for the pure vanity that is book publishing in the digital era.
I thought you’d try something like… daily video installments on Blip.tv.
Congrats, Jeff. Looking forward to seeing how you translate to the printed page.
Congrats Jeff
I have a follow up book for you already.
WWAD: What Would Apple Design.
congrats jeff!
My reaction Jeff is Mazal Tov (Hebrew: מזל טוב‎) which literally means “good fortune” in Hebrew.
I worked at Harper for 6 years – a good house for you to take up residence in for a bit.
I can not wait to see how you nudge, twist and cajole them into new models of authors, books & getting word out in the post-post world of 2.0.
Seriously – let me know how I can help.
Jeff, great news. This is going to be such a fun read! Please, please include a WWGD chapter for our former, glossy industry. Oh, yeah, and we call firsties for the “What Would Google Do?” bumper sticker concession at http://www.thedailygreen.com
The one thing we know about Google is “say one thing and do another.” The company whose motto is “don’t be evil” is in fact the most evil company going today, outside of mainland China.
The marvel is they way they’ve managed to create a squeaky-clean image while massively violating privacy, spitting all over copyrights and intellectual property, and colluding with China to throw decent people in prison. They’ve created a “network neutrality” movement whose lust for regulation represents the greatest threat to the Internet and free speech that’s ever happened.
Google is truly a monstrous monopoly, and I hope you will chip away at their massive foundation, Jeff. Some day you’ll be celebrated as a champion of freedom if you help in some small way to shine a light on the threat to democracy that is Google.
Jeff, Congrats, bravos, kudos and cheers! All the best,
Congratulations! If I am still a bookseller next spring, I will absolutely delight in ordering, reading, and hand-selling your book to my customers. If not, you are still guaranteed this reader and some ensuing word-of-mouth.
Sounds awesome Jeff. Really excited to live through the process with you.
Congrats and Good Luck!
Sounds like a great book idea. One thing that is impressive about Google is that it actually treats its workforce from an information age perspective vs. the traditional industrial age perspective that still exists at most Fortune 500 companies. Google gets it and the young innovative workers of the future flock to their door wanting to be a part of that transformation.
“Of course, I’ll also be applying Google rules to books in the book.”
What does this mean?
Michael,
I mean that I will write about what books and publishing should be in the Google age, something I’ve written about a lot in this blog.
j
[...] of Virginia, is in the process of writing a book called The Googlization of Everything. Also, Jeff Jarvis has recently been contracted to write a book about Google’s business strategy relating it to other businesses and industries, aptly named: [...]
Hi Jeff
I recall heariing from you some questions that started with the same sort of preamble in several of our discussions (WWGD) and I am thrilled you are taking it all the way to be a book. Congratulations on this “assignment” and for following Seth Godin’s advice. Hear hear!!!
[...] been working on an essay for the upcoming Personal Democracy Forum — and also for my book, WWGD? — about the future of government online, and so I want to throw some of the ideas I’ve [...]
Congrats Jeff!
Interesting to hear, if you ever want to ping pong any bit my email is info@blogoscoped.com, I’m maintaining a daily news blog about Google.
Thanks, Jeff. The wording threw me. Good luck with the book!
Jeff,
As you know I have also found that writing a paper book is a good way to focus the mind and leave a benchmark.
Good luck and make sure you include Polis at LSE on your book tour!
regards
Charlie Beckett
[...] (This concept will no doubt be further developed in his upcoming book What Would Google Do?) [...]
[...] I just typed this while writing the book: [...]
look forward to it! congrats!
[...] Siva Vaidhyanathan informa de cuatro nuevos libros que verán la luz y que versarán sobre Google: WWGD? (What Would Google Do?) de Jeff Jarvis, Planet Google de Randall Stross, Searching for Google de Steven Levy y The [...]
[...] what it was, I had to be involved. I’m using Publish2 now to save and tag all my links for my book (I’ll publish them here soon) and I really look forward to seeing the community of [...]
[...] * Platforms. Take Google, of course. It is the anti-Yahoo, built on the distributed model of enabling countless companies to start atop what it provides. Yahoo, I’ve said, shouldn’t just break up into smaller pieces; it should make its entire self exportable and reusable. Ditto AOL. Ditto, for that matter, Microsoft. Amazon and Google are offering up their infrastructures as the bases for others’ companies and that’s smart. Pardon the plug for my book, but they should all be asking WWGD? [...]
[...] writing a chunk of my book now about one of my favorite topics: how much I despise real-estate agents and how eagerly I await [...]
[...] have WWGD? on the brain, because I’m writing a book under that title and because the title has been the subject of discussion the last few days. I went [...]
[...] my book, I’ve been thinking about a few industries that I think are impervious to social, Google-age, [...]
[...] should have asked — pardon the plug for the book — WWGD? If they had thought like Google, they would have tried to figure out how to use what they had built [...]
[...] here’s another idea, one I’m toying with for the book: What if I could subscribe to the iPhone as I subscribe to a magazine or newspaper? When the new [...]
[...] It’s not Google’s fault: Score one for newspapers. I haven’t heard anyone complain about Google in a while now, modest proposals excepted. If anything, there’s a healthy increase in asking “What Would Google Do?“ [...]
[...] BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » WWGD? – The book Prelude to Jeff’s book ‘What would Google do?’ out next spring (can’t wait!) (tags: google books business future government) [...]
[mlm blog]…
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it… [ ?]…
[...] Jeff Jarvis is working on a book called What Would Google Do? Since Google just did something good for me — and for a market that needs help desperately — I thought I’d share my experience with Jeff and the rest of you. [...]
[...] Jeff Jarvis is working on a book called What Would Google Do? Since Google just did something good for me — and for a market that needs help desperately — I thought I’d share my experience with Jeff and the rest of you. [...]
[...] I noticed this blip on Stowe Boyd’s blog, regarding Jeff Jarvis’ new book WWGD? – What Would Google Do? [...]
[...] just went in the corrected (I hope) manuscript for my book. It has been a real crunch at the end (because the deadline and pub date were moved up) so I [...]
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[...] I wrote the chapter in my book on Googlified insurance — thanks to the wisdom of the crowd in the comments here — I [...]
[...] I decided to write my book, What Would Google Do?, I also decided that I did not want access to [...]
[...] paragraphs from the end of my book: Whatever causes they take up, Generation G will be able to organize without organizations, as Clay [...]
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[...] looking forward to seeing the new book by Jeff Jarvis, ‘What Would Google Do‘, where he reverse-engineers Google and applies the learnings to a variety of different [...]
[...] looking forward to seeing the new book by Jeff Jarvis, ‘What Would Google Do‘, where he reverse-engineers Google and applies the learnings to a variety of different [...]
I was given a pre-release copy of your book for book review purposes. I was hooked on page 8 with Dell Hell. I went through a similar experience with Dell but didn’t know I could do something about it.
Now – someone needs to do something about the companies who tell me that my call is important to them, but not sufficiently important that they would actually hire a person to answer the phone and talk to me. How do we convince companies that phone menus are from hell and we hate them?
[...] and takes on the challenge of thoroughly examining the fastest-growing company in history. On his blog Jarvis writes: “I’m reverse-engineering Google, taking the lessons and rules I find in their [...]
Just wanted to say that it was a pleasure working with you today.
You’re quite an entertaining guy! I am by no means a cerebral type – but the way you laid your argument out was easy to understand. I can’t wait to read the full book!
[...] genom antalet ”klick”. Det slog mig att antingen har Rikard studerat slutledningarna i Jeff Jarvis bok WWGD ”What Would Google do?”. Eller har Jarvis uppfattat företaget Googles värderingar och [...]
[...] It’s obvious we’re at a significant crossroads and there’s a lot of optimistic talk about how we just need to figure out what the new problems (opportunities) are and then solve them. [...]
[...] har en av de rikaste, Richard Branson, startat ett försök helt i Google-anda (enligt modellen ”What Would Google Do”?). I TV-monitorerna på Bransons flygbolag Virgin Atlantic kan resenärerna se ett antal [...]
[...] Internetbeteende. Allt utgående från undersökningen Internet Explorers samt från tankemodellen WWGD. Min presentation slutade i hur iPhone används vid ACU. Bento 2 för både dator och iPhone [...]
[...] att olika media behandlar samma händelse på olika sätt. Jeff Jarvis, mannen som myntat begreppet WWGD, har som den journalist han är kastat sig in i debatten om dagstidningars existensberättigande i [...]
[...] än 25 miljoner medlemmar från hösten ska betygsätta sina läkare. Det här är helt i linje med WWGD (What Would Google Do?). För det var så Jeff Jarvis fick idén till sin bok. Han hade problem med dotortillverkaren Dells [...]
[...] http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/03/19/wwgd-the-book/ [...]
[...] pas chère, il faut donc chercher de nouvelles pistes. Je lis en ce moment le livre de Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do? (La méthode Google) en français qui expose l’idée que le modèle Google devrait [...]
[...] alles mit sich bringen… mehr zufällig bin ich beim aussuchen meiner Ferienlektüre über Jeff Jarvis’s WWGD (What would Google Do) beziehungsweise auf dessen deutsche Übersetzung “Was würde Google tun” gestossen. [...]
[...] Inga tryckkostnader, inga lagerkostnader och inga mellanhänder (läs; bokhandlare) enligt What Would Google Do-modellen. Den som önskar en tryckt version kan få sitt exemplar genom “print on [...]
[...] paraphrase Jeff Jarvis, WWGD (what would Google do)? It is doing, step by step, connecting the dots and laying the foundations [...]