Seth Godin’s 2003 Reading List

This is a key component in my Purple Cow thinking, but with a twist. I'm not as worried about the chasm as I am about the desire of marketers to go for the big middle.

Guy has written several irrestible books, but this is a great place to start. It's all about starting the virus.

This book exhaustively looks at one very influential group of early adopters. This may not be YOUR group, but the thinking applies to every hive I can think of.

Tom Peters at his best--the book that will push you to do the safe (risky) thing you must do to make your products remarkable.

Very old, very good. If you're doing any advertising, you have a professional obligation to read this.

I don't know if you can teach this kind of creativity, but you can certainly raise your expectations by seeing how well they do design.

Out of print, but findable at abebooks and other spots, this is a book about an entrepreneur getting his head around the otaku of his audience.

This book helped me see design differently. Good design costs just as much as bad design, but it breaks through all sorts of clutter.

The biggest challenge most executives face is selling their ideas, not their products. And selling internally is a lot like selling in the street. This is the best book I've ever read about selling anything at all.

Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough insight was to focus on the micro-relationships between individuals, which helped organizations realize that it's not about the big ads and the huge charity balls... it's about setting the stage for the buzz to start.

This book outlines the reasons why many efforts to jumpstart third-world economies fail. It's not just peasants, though. Many of your prospects feel precisely the same way.

This book is built around the brilliant insight that your prospect doesn't care nearly as much about what you do as you do, and thus you must boil down your offering into a unique slot that repositions the competition.