The K Book Club (With Book Giveaway!)

I swore that I would never have a giveaway, but here I am doing a giveaway. I was opposed to giveaways at first because I was thinking that it was a really cheesy way to attract readers to my blog. I thought that I didn't want readers coming to my blog just for a chance to win some lame prize, but that I wanted real fans that actually appreciate my writing and ideas. Ironically, after reading this book, I've decided to be less snobby about the type of reader I want to attract. When you're trying to build a colossal media empire (muahahaha), one should not expect everyone to be a die-hard fan. In fact, when building a media empire, one is actually hoping for a whole lot of followers who are only following because their more well-informed friends told them to.

So, thanks to Malcolm Gladwell whose ideas convinced me to do this, I'm going to do a book giveaway. And the book I'm giving away is his book, The Tipping Point, which is practically brand new and has only been read once, by me, and I swear I never once took it in the bathroom! I know it's pretty lame that I'm not giving away a brand new book, but the reason I thought of doing a giveaway in the first place is because I end up having a large collection of books I never read again every year that I need to somehow get rid of. So, I thought this would be a great way to recycle them. (Please see the previous post regarding why I don't just take library books out.)

So, if you would like a chance to win this terrific book, you must:

1. follow my blog, and
2. leave a comment on this post on Blogger (It doesn't have to say anything fancy...a "What's up?" would be fine.)

Also, if you link to this post from elsewhere (twitter, facebook, or your own blog), you can have additional entries...one for every medium you use. Just let me know in this comments section what you did.

(I highlighted that part for the folks who could give a crap about what else I have to say so they can just read and run! Haha...am I nice or what?) Anyway, in a week's time, I'll put all the names into a hat and let my kids pull out the winner and announce it next week. And, if this works out, this might become a regular thing...

I feel like I'm conducting a little social experiment based on what I learned in this book! Pretty cool...let's see what happens!

Well, enough of that. Here's the book review:

You know, I don't typically read books like this. They look like painfully boring reads to me. The only reason I picked up this book at Walden Books the other day was because it was on a table with a sticker that said "Buy one, get one half off" and because my sister had read it and recommended it to me. In fact, I was trying my hardest not to buy the book because it looked just so damn boring. I picked up the Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (fiction) right away and just could not make up my mind about another book. Because of my sister's recommendation, I finally grabbed this, thinking I would read it after I was done with Wao.

The funny thing is that after I bought it, I just opened it up while eating lunch to just check out the first few sentences, and then I was hooked and ended up reading it in two days! Wao is still on the nightstand. I thought this was a business book (yawn...) but it turns out to be more a sociology book, which is much, much more interesting to me. And unlike a typical sociology book, it is not written in that terminally boring "grad school thesis" style, but actually in a very compelling conversational tone. He is a great writer and researcher.

Now, I usually like my books to make me laugh and make me cry and teach me something about life and people, so you can imagine that I thought a book about how trends become trends would be something I would find awful. While it did not make me cry, it did make me smile and even made my hairs stand on end a couple of times when he made some especially lucid observations, and it definitely taught me something about life and about people, so it is a true winner in my book.

He states in his book that there are 3 principles that are at play in what helps certain products or ideas reach a "tipping point", when they turn into social epidemics and spread like wildfire.

The first is the "Law of the Few". This was one of the most fascinating parts of the book. He describes the key players (who are often small in number) that help to make a thing turn into a trend of epidemic proportions. He described 3 types of people that have subtle, but powerful influences on other people: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. Connectors are people who have a knack for making new friends and acquaintances and have a large social network. They seem to know everybody and they enjoy bringing people together. Mavens are people who like to help other people by offering the latest and best information and tips. They can't help themselves from recommending the best deal, say, when you're in the market for a car. And they know what they're talking about because they have done all the research. Finally, Salesmen are those exceptionally charismatic people who can charm you into their way of thinking. They do it effortlessly and it comes naturally to them and it is not an act. He names specific examples of each of these types of people and they are fascinating character studies. (You could definitely insert one of these amazing characters into a book!)

The next principle he describes is "The Stickiness Factor", which is the ability of an idea or message to "stick" with an audience and make it memorable. He gave a couple of great marketing examples which illustrated how important it was for the audience to connect with a message and in a way, be able to participate.

The last principle is "The Power of Context", which states that human behavior is strongly influenced by the environment. Being in a pleasant atmosphere will affect your thinking and behavior in one way, and being in an unpleasant atmosphere will affect your thinking and behavior in another way.

That is a very abbreviated summary of this book. There are so many anecdotes and interesting stories in this book--it is a wealth of useful and fascinating information. I had a VERY hard time putting this down. And, as you know, it also had a powerful impact on me because here I am conducting my own little "Tipping Point" experiment on this blog.

You, dear readers, are the Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen that I hope will go out and disseminate information about this blog post today. The book giveaway is the "sticky" message I'm sending. The only thing I can't influence is your environments, so I'm just going to cross my fingers on that one.

Let's see what happens! Isn't this fun???