Mitch Says:

The three of us want to bring the concepts in the two business books to you, but we are looking for leaders. All three of us command substantial public speaking and consulting fees, but we have decided to wave both the honorariums and travel expenses (within the United States and Canada) for those who can bring 200 people together in a room.

In fact, I’m going to lift most of Mitch’s post and put it here to make it more consistent:

We’re calling it: Building Trust In A Connected World Summit.

Here’s the deal:

Purchase 200 copies of both Trust Agents and Six Pixels of Separation(amazon link) (a total of 400 books), invite 200 people (but you can feel free to invite more) into a room (you take care of the room, food, AV, etc…), and all three of us will spend a half-day with your group (each one of us will speak for 45-60 min individually, and your event is concluded by having all three of us on-stage for a roundtable/Q&A session). In order to make summits as easy as possible from a logistics standpoint, we also made an agreement with the bookseller, 800-CEO-Read, for a special bulk-buy rate (save nearly 40% off of the retail price).

But wait… there’s more… (snarky infomercial line for dramatic effect):

As a special “thank you” for taking a leadership role in your community and organizing a Building Trust In A Connected World Summit, one of us will also supply your own company Blog with a guest Blog post (topic to be decided between the parties) and will also lead a private one-hour consulting session for you and your team (yes, you can pick favourites as to who you would prefer).

Why are we doing this?

Clearly, we want to sell more books. But, selling books is useless if no one takes the concepts from within the pages and turns them into action. In both books, there are countless mentions of how individuals are becoming leaders in their business communities – both online and in real-life. These many new digital channels, platforms and online social networks facilitate the ability to connect to like-minded individuals, but it’s taking the online connections and turning them them into real results that matter – that means meeting in real-life, sharing and connecting. That’s what this is really about.

Become a leader right now. Create a Building Trust In A Connected World Summit today!

If you are interested in leading a summit, please email Mitch.

I got an email from Donna Wolfolk Cross telling me about her promo for Pope Joan, and that’s exactly what she’s offering.

What makes this interesting to me?

We no longer sell books: we sell access. We don’t sell music: we sell access. Creators are no longer stopping at the borders of their creation, but instead, are finding ways to include their audience (hopefully their community) in their experiences.

I support Donna’s idea here. Pretty interesting stuff, and yet another way to get our attention in a crowded world. I haven’t yet read the book, and as I only read fiction recommended by Ann Kingman at present, I’ll have to do my homework before I buy Pope Joan.

Have you read it?

Swing over and look at the Pope Joan promo and come back. What do you think? Interesting to you?

The Story So Far

None of what I’ll talk about accounts for what Wiley themselves are doing (until I’m directly involved, and then I’ll share that). I know they’ve started sending advanced copies to the mainstream press and things like that. Instead, I’ll focus on what Julien and I have done.

Site: TrustAgent.com – Julien acquired the URL for TrustAgent.com a few months back, and put up a landing page. We have some ideas for things we want to do there, but haven’t executed those yet. Just the same, it does make a point of presence where you can learn more about the book, see what people are saying on the web about the book, pre-order the book, and get our free eBook, so that’s a decent point of presence for us.

Twitter: @TrustAgents – We have a Twitter account, but haven’t started using that as a channel yet, because both @julien and @chrisbrogan have a following, and it seems silly to create a secondary silo for book information.

Facebook: Trust Agents Page – We built a Trust Agents Page on Facebook. As of this writing, there are 769 fans. We are currently growing at about 100 fans a day, but that’s with some active pushing and messaging around it. The page is so far successful insofar as we’re engaging people with conversations on the wall, and we’re staying really active talking about concepts in the book, as well as talking about people’s interests. So far, the Facebook page has been fun for me, and I suspect Julien likes it as well.

Other Touchpoints – I’ve done some smaller things, like edited my email signature to include a link to the book. I’ve added a link to the book into my Facebook bio. I just realized that it’s not mentioned in my blog bio page, but I’ll add it there, too. I’ve started adding elements of Trust Agents to speeches I do, and have definitely mentioned here and there that the book’s coming out. I sent out a mention of the book and the Facebook group in my email blast (thanks, BlueSkyFactory!), as well.

What’s Working?

We have no idea, but here’s some things I know:

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #22,104 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories: (What’s this?)
#49 in Books > Computers & Internet > Business & Culture > Manager’s Guides to Computing
#60 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Systems & Planning

Also Barnes & Noble says: Sales Rank: 18,390

Is that good? Who knows? The book hasn’t even come out yet and we’re rushing up a few categories. It’s not bad

What Comes Next?

Not sure, but here are some things we’re trying to manage:

• Get on National TV
• Get an article into a few national magazines
• Do many face-to-face events (I’ve started trading my speaking fee for book purchases in certain cases)
• Find potential institutional interest
• Recruit other trust agents to share their stories

We’ll see where it all goes. But you’re along for the ride.

Is this interesting to consider?