#7
W
hat’s the least crowded channel?
Fast-forward to December 26, 2006. I had finished writing The 4-Hour Workweek and I had sat
down after a lovely Christmas to think about the upcoming April launch. What to do? I had no
idea, so I tracked down roughly a dozen best-selling authors. I asked each one questions like,
“What were the biggest wastes of time and money for your last book launch? What would you
never do again? What would you do more of? If you had to choose one place to focus $10,000,
where would you focus?”
I heard one word repeatedly: blogs. They were apparently both very powerful and
under-appreciated. My first question was “What the hell is a blog?” My next questions were
“How are people currently trying to reach bloggers?” and “What’s the least crowded channel?”
The people pitching bloggers were generally using email first and phone second. Even though
those were my strengths, I decided to experiment with in-person meetings at conferences.
Why? Because I felt my odds would be better as one out of five people in a lounge than one
email out of 500 emails in an overflowing inbox. I packed my bags and headed to Las Vegas for
the Consumer Electronics Show in January, which had more than 150,000 attendees in 2005. It’s
like the Super Bowl of technology releases, where all the geeks get to play with new toys. I never
even walked in the front door. I parked myself at the offsite Seagate-sponsored BlogHaus lounge,
where bloggers were invited to relax, recharge their laptops, and drink free booze. I sipped
alcohol, asked a lot of dumb questions, and never overtly pitched. I only mentioned the book if
someone asked me why I was there (answer: “I just finished my first book, and I’m really nervous
about the launch. I’m here to learn more about blogs and technology.”). Famous tech blogger
Robert Scoble later described my intricate marketing plan as “get drunk with bloggers.” It
worked surprisingly well.