If You Want to Reach a Bigger Audience, Unleash an Ideavirus

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Several years ago Seth Godin published a book called Unleashing The Ideavirus. He told his publisher he wanted to give the entire book away for free. You can download it here.

The publisher thought he was nuts. But, he published it anyway. It spread to so many people that the publisher decided to buy it.

1. There’s no friction. You don’t have to enter your email address. You don’t have to share it on social media to get access.

2. There’s no compromise in quality because it’s free.

3. He promotes the paid version of the book in the free version.

Seth has a habit of poking the box, questioning the status quo, and writing his own rules.

I knew no publisher would give me a book deal for The Scenic Route(you can read it for free). But that didn’t prevent me from writing it. It’s my most personal book yet. I was more interested in unleashing an ideavirus than I was in selling copies of this book.

So I removed the friction I hired Mars Dorian to design a cover and hired a copy editor to clean it up. It might cost several hundred dollars to produce. It might not make any money. But it’s designed to spread. In the long run, an ideavirus could be more profitable than a book that sells a couple of…