I was done with books. My first real book after years of being a book packager was a game changer, a worldwide bestseller and the key to creating the email marketing industry.
But how to follow that? I decided not to try.
More than a year of not writing, nothing but my blog.
And then Malcolm Gladwell sent me over a galley copy of The Tipping Point, asking for a blurb. It was nine months before his book came out, and I dove right in. I offered a blurb the next day.
But…
I couldn’t sleep that night, realizing that the book had opened up some thinking that I had been avoiding. So I started typing, and ten days later, I had written all of Unleashing the Ideavirus. None of it is copied from Malcolm’s book, but I felt badly publishing my book before his–so I asked his permission. He was super gracious and even wrote the foreword.
I offered the book to my publisher, under the proviso that they publish it quickly and offer a free digital version. They said ‘no’ to both rules, so I published it myself.
It’s been downloaded millions of times, and the self-published hardcover went to #5 overall in the US and #4 in the Japanese translation.
Many of the groundbreaking ideas in this book have been proven to be correct, and the unfortunate title also presaged tragic events worldwide. My friend Lisa encouraged me to call it Unleashing the Ideafungus, but that was weird.
Here’s lost footage from the now-vanished Vook version: