WWGD? - The book
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.
March 19th, 2008 at 8:03 am
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”
March 19th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Congrats, Jeff. Great news.
March 19th, 2008 at 8:27 am
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.
March 19th, 2008 at 8:40 am
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.
March 19th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Fantastic idea getting your readers to write your book. Looking forward to the revenue share model
March 19th, 2008 at 9:16 am
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.
March 19th, 2008 at 9:17 am
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 …
March 19th, 2008 at 9:27 am
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
March 19th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Sounds like a great way to re-think.
Thanks.
March 19th, 2008 at 10:52 am
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?
March 19th, 2008 at 11:20 am
I first though the initials stood for What Would God Do. I guess I was close.
March 19th, 2008 at 11:38 am
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
March 19th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Jeff,
Congratulations! I look forward to hearing how it progresses and your experiences in the publishing world.
Aloha,
Ben Casnocha
March 19th, 2008 at 11:49 am
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.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Congrats, Jeff. Looking forward to seeing how you translate to the printed page.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Congrats Jeff
I have a follow up book for you already.
WWAD: What Would Apple Design.
March 19th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
congrats jeff!
March 19th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
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.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
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
March 19th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
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.
March 19th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Jeff, Congrats, bravos, kudos and cheers! All the best,
March 19th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
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.
March 20th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Sounds awesome Jeff. Really excited to live through the process with you.
March 20th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Congrats and Good Luck!
March 20th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
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.
March 21st, 2008 at 7:43 pm
“Of course, I’ll also be applying Google rules to books in the book.”
What does this mean?
March 21st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
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
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 am
[...] 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: [...]
March 22nd, 2008 at 11:08 am
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!!!
March 22nd, 2008 at 2:52 pm
[...] 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 [...]
March 22nd, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Congrats Jeff!
March 22nd, 2008 at 8:37 pm
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.
March 24th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Thanks, Jeff. The wording threw me. Good luck with the book!
March 25th, 2008 at 5:23 am
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
March 26th, 2008 at 5:09 am
[...] (This concept will no doubt be further developed in his upcoming book What Would Google Do?) [...]
March 26th, 2008 at 8:35 am
[...] I just typed this while writing the book: [...]
March 26th, 2008 at 10:24 am
look forward to it! congrats!
March 30th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
[...] 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 [...]
March 31st, 2008 at 7:50 am
[...] 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 [...]
April 6th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
[...] * 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? [...]
April 6th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
[...] 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 [...]
April 9th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
[...] 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 [...]
April 26th, 2008 at 8:41 am
[...] my book, I’ve been thinking about a few industries that I think are impervious to social, Google-age, [...]