How do you find a modern marketing master these days?

You find them by the trail they leave.

Seth Godin WRITES. And I love his lists of things (because he's usually right about stuff - I still don't know about that "Purple Cow" concept, but I'm a farmer by avocation, and my first response is from that poem, "...But I can tell you one thing now, I'd rather see than be one.")

This particular blog entry I ran into after another blogger/marketing guru Michael Campbell sent me several links and an article Seth wrote which told everything about why you get good at something and just perservere regardless. (And incidentally touched on a concept from Gregg Braden - covered in "A Modern View".)

Seth writes about the Music industry continually shooting itself in the foot (their past their knees now...)

You have to note here that the business isn't over, just the format they've locked themselves into.

Seth's Blog: Music lessons: "Things you can learn from the music business (as it falls apart)"

In the writing arena, even copy-protecting your PDFs is a bit stupid. You want participation in your work. If you can't copy or print pages out of it, then you won't have people quoting or re-working your text (and they certainly won't give you credit).

PDF's can be opened and saved in a non-secure format easily. Either open it in a Linux O/S and save it to text/print it - or open it in a program what came from Linux, like GSView. I got a password removal program, myself.

Now I edit from public domain books, so I see no problem taking some long-dead author's work and repurposing it. I'm researching and writing for the broader picture and excerpts from their chapters make far more sense than a lot of our "scientists" do today - but I diverge.

When someone takes a 1912 text and copy-protects it for their own profit, they are just whistling past the graveyard. It only stops the stupid ones.

When I find a truly outstanding public domain text, I'll usually find several copies on the 'Net in various versions. I'll take the best copy (most complete, easiest to use) and extract the text, then reformat it. Then I add value by either combining it with other related works or adding a commentary or something.

In the music industry, this would be similar to "re-mixing" where you add in another voice or instrument (it's also known as kareoke, where you delete the main voice and add your own - ahem - vocals).

It just goes back to Seth's point - "Copy protection in a digital age is a pipe dream
If the product you make becomes digital, expect that the product you make will be copied."

You write for the interaction, to help someone improve their life. You don't write to "make money".

And I am looking forward to getting my own copy of his recent book, "The Dip". The excerpts I've seen from it are fascinating - Madison Avenue meets Earl Nightingale and Dale Carnegie (and a host of others).

Thanks, Seth.

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Update:
Clicked on "the Dip" link on Seth's blog.
This took me to some pop-up thingy which had a "Google This" link.
That took me to a blog Seth writes about that book.
That then linked to a manifesto (read: mini-summary by the author - manifesto is a double-edged word, thanks, Karl),
which then lead me to subscribe to Seth's Dip blog on my Google Reader.

That manifesto scanned easily, and I'm looking forward to getting the rest of his Dip blog scanned after I come back in from farm chores (I blog in the early am before it's light - my cows are used to me coming around when I'm not stumbling into their latest deposit.)

But thought you'd like to see how technology has changed our information sharing...