4 Hour Marketing Strategy
Tim Ferriss is the most perfect man in the world. Just Ask Him!
Ferriss has written several business change/self-improvement books recently, all with the title “4 Hour” one thing or another, and the latest, The 4 Hour Chef, drops today. Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour book series, otherwise known as “Life for Dummies”, is phenomenally successful, and if he needed these wishes I’d offer Tim Ferriss my best on The 4 Hour Chef.
Tim Ferriss doesn’t need good luck. Barnes and Noble, on the other hand, might.
What’s fascinating about The 4 Hour Chef is that you can’t walk into a book store and buy it. I’m not saying you can’t get a printed copy of The 4 Hour Chef; Amazon.com has it ready, right now. You can buy the 4 Hour Chef by clicking this link
, or click this link for the e-book version of 4-Hour Chef
(disclosure: if you use these Amazon Affiliate links, we get a commission).
While you’re at it, you might like to check out Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Body
, or even the original animal in the 4-Hour book series, The 4-Hour Workweek
.
And there might be book stores where you can lay your hands on a copy of The 4 Hour Chef. But what you can’t do is walk into the last remaining big book seller, Barnes and Noble, and buy a copy of the 4 Hour Chef.
Oh boy.
Barnes and Noble’s rationale for the beginning of this position is that on-line sales from places like Amazon.com are eating into their business. But since Barnes and Noble and their new buddies at Microsoft have embraced on-line and e-book reader book sales, it stands to reason that Barnes and Noble should be happy to sell The 4 Hour Chef (and as you can see, Barnes and Noble sells other Tim Ferriss 4 Hour books).
The reason Barnes and Noble is refusing to sell The 4 Hour Chef is that Tim Ferriss used Amazon to publish it. So Barnes and Noble is saying that they don’t want their competitor in the e-book space to dive into the realm of paper books and are fighting that by forgoing the exact same amount of revenue that they’d make if some other company had published The 4 Hour Chef.
Really?
Business Changes. There’s no doubt that Amazon is very much a threat to Barnes and Noble and other brick-and-mortar retailers. And Barnes and Noble is doing what they can to fight Amazon on the electronic front, with the Nook. But refusing to carry a paper book in their stores because Amazon is its publisher won’t help Barnes and Noble, it will hurt them. People who want The 4 Hour Chef will just buy it elsewhere; very likely directly from Amazon.
Meanwhile, as Barnes and Noble buries its head in the sand, Amazon is pioneering new distribution channels. The 4 Hour Chef the the first e-book you can buy through file sharing software BitTorrent. So much for the position that BitTorrent has no legitimate use.
Media, marketing, and for that that the marketing of media are changing — have changed. Magazines are bundling. Despite Apple’s evil business practices in eBooks, eBooks are the next great area for business media change. Barnes and Noble thinking that they can fight Amazon like this is just naïve.
Dear Barnes and Noble: please try to figure out meaningful business change and expand your Influency. Refusing to stock The 4 Hour Chef isn’t it.
Looking to build your Influency* ? I’m right here.
