Rework is a great book to read if you want to get more out of your workday. Nothing in the book is revolutionary, but the ideas will get you get you back to basics or set you on the right path. I worked for a company where I found myself pulling data for nearly half a day in order to get ready for a weekly meeting. The data really wasn’t useful in my optimization and, honestly, wasn’t really what my manager needed to be looking at to determine my effectiveness. We also had another group meeting in which our entire team would present data for 2 hours. Each of us spent another entire morning preparing and then 2 hours in the meeting. That left just a couple of hours for actual work. The information presented by other members was interesting, but didn’t really impact my job.

Rework provides ways to cut down on meetings such as these and some great tips on how to organize your work and be more productive. The Rework website has some great videos and even a PDF excerpt for download.

Most business books give you the same old advice: Write a business plan, study the competition, seek investors, yadda yadda. If you’re looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf. “Rework “shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business. Read it and you’ll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don’t need outside investors, and why you’re better off ignoring the competition.

The truth is, you need less than you think.
You don’t need to be a workaholic.
You don’t need to staff up.
You don’t need to waste time on paperwork or meetings.
You don’t even need an office.

Those are all just excuses.

Head over to Lulu.com and purchase Rework for just $14.45 if you enter the code “rework” at check-out (expires June 30). They are offering FREE Shipping on all orders over $19.95 this summer!

I’ve written a few posts about eBook readers, but still don’t feel like I’d enjoy reading a book on a Kindle or Nook. I don’t know if the iPad will be any different. Using the device to read magazines could be interesting, but the subscription price would have to be lower than the physical version. I like grabbing a book and just digging in and being able to throw it down on the coffee table or shelf when I’m done. With an eBook Reader that experience would change. I do use my iPhone to read numerous RSS feeds and enjoy that, but the content is usually shorter.

What I’m Reading:

Scratch Beginnings – Adam Shepard: A book about his experience trying to get from only having $25 and nowhere to live to $5000 in his bank account and an apartment. A good read and interesting story. I read this book in one day (not something that is uncommon for me). I do wish the book was longer, as he mentioned a few events in the epilogue that seemed like they would have been very interesting. Adam lives in Raleigh and does public speaking about his experience.

Rework – Jason Fried and David Hansson: The latest offering from the founders of 37Signals. They published their first book using Lulu and it sold extremely well. This is one book that I’ll have a notebook open while I read in order to take notes.

Skinema – Chris Nieratako: I have always been accused of reading weird books. This would definitely fall into the “weird” category. Chris is a decent writer and his short passages are quick to read yet engaging.

Flip The Funnel – Joseph Jaffe: I received this book for free from the author. He ran a Facebook contest and gave the 1st 30 people to become a fan of the book, free copies. It is a great read so far and I hope to implement some of his ideas for customer engagement.

(UPDATED)

I also read The Lie by Chad Kultgen. He is also the author of The Average American Male. Both are excellent books and are highly recommended. I finished The Lie in just over 24 hours. His first book was promoted using YouTube and was noted for going “viral” and getting a big lift from social media, but I really don’t recall hearing about it at all last year before or after I had read it. Find out more on Chad’s official site.

This is just a short list of what I have waiting to be read on my bookshelf. I’d love to get other recommendations in the comments.

My wife, son and I probably go to the bookstore every other week and always walk out with a pretty big pile of books. When I taught 6th grade, I made sure to read to my students daily. I think I made it through five books during the year I taught. It made me feel pretty sad when I found out that many of the students had never been read to before.

I’ve never been the type of person who reads multiple books at once, but for some reason, I have three books going right now. Here is what I’m reading (and a couple of others that I recently finished).

Oil by Upton Sinclair- The movie There Will Be Blood is based on the novel. I’m a big fan of this era in American history and find myself reading quite a number of novels and historical texts from this time period. The book is very different from the movie.

Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk – I have liked pretty much everything written by Palahniuk except for Fight Club. Pygmy is an odd story and is written in broken English and it took me a few pages to get into a flow. Here is Palahniuk’s description of the novel from his website:

The lead character is a 13-year-old foreign exchange student sent to live with a suburban, white, middle-class family. Oh, and they’re Christians. The visit is for six months, and he’s one of a dozen similar kids, all shipped to America to live with typical families. The secret truth is that Pygmy is a terrorist, trained since infancy in martial arts, chemistry and radical hatred of the United States. He has six months to build a prize-winning project for the National Science Fair. If he succeeds, he and his project will go to Washington, D.C. for the finals competition — where the project will explode, killing millions.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini -I was recently given this book while talking marketing with the CEO of a local Raleigh company. I’m only about 60 pages in, but I am already coming up with new marketing ideas. Some of the examples are a bit dated, Hare Krishna’s at airports and Amway, but the underlying message still translates to today.

The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight - I read this book in under 24 hours. I picked this book up at a local bookstore in Asheville and could have easily bought about seven other titles. The story is about a group of college-aged Muslim punks in Buffalo. I struggled a bit with some of the religious terms, but was sucked into the story pretty quick. Probably one of my favorite books of the past few years.

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary – I am reading this childhood favorite to my son each night. He’s at the point where we can move past picture books and onto books like this. I love reading to him and have since the day he was born. He’s even able to read on his own.

Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott – I recently finished this book about a pair of sisters who ran the most successful brothel in Chicago, the Everleigh Club, during the 1920’s and 30’s. A good mix of history and fiction.

What are you reading? Let me know in the comments.

My friend Anthony Policastro has made his latest book Absense of Faith available as a free download to entice readers to purchase the print version. Other authors are making chapters of their work available as a free download and then selling the rest of the book. One suspense author even made the entire book free sans the last 2 pages where the killer was revealed.

Here is a a great list of Free eBook Sites.

- Free Online Novels: A STAGGERING collection of free novels. Thousands of links to every genre.
- Ebookee: A good site if you are looking for IT and technical eBooks. Some other genres represented as well.
- FreeBookSpot: A decent site with a 50/50 mix of technical and fiction eBooks.
- WOWIO: Numerous free downloads are available, but you can read any book online for free or download them for a small fee. Many major publishers are represented. Also offers a number of comics in eBook format.
- Online Free eBooks: A great collection of books and guides.
- Project Gutenberg: Thousands of books available in a wide range of formats. Plucker versions are available for the Palm OS.

If you know of any more sites offering free eBook downloads, please leave the links in the comments.

I have found that I can take advantage of a hot topic by checking the top 15 or so in the morning and seeing if any of the terms make sense for any products I am pushing. For example, A few weeks ago I found that the term “Susan B. Anthony” was Volcanic. I did a search through my product list and found that I had a number of books about Susan B. Anthony available. I quickly created a campaign and was able to push a number of sales through a term that I wouldn’t normally have in my account (my specific industry is a bit different and does not really fit into the mold of having the long, long list of long-tail keywords).

I take a look at the campaign after a few hours and decide to kill it or keep it going. This is 180 degrees from my usual campaign management. I like to run for a week before I tweak, but in this case, I make a quick decision.

There are a few other great search trend tools that I use and will be writing about in the next few weeks.

From Guy’s Site:

If the two most popular words in your company are “partner” and “strategic,” and “partner” has become a verb, and “strategic” is used to describe decisions and activities that don’t make sense, it’s time for a reality check. Reality Check is a compilation of Guy’s best wit, wisdom, and contrarian opinions in handy book form. From competition to customer service, innovation to marketing, he shows readers how to ignore fads and foolishness while sticking to commonsense practices.

While a number of topics in the book do not apply to me (yet) I found a high number of them that currently do. The book isn’t a sit down and power through type of book, but is perfect to pick-up and read a section or two.

A few of the topics:

* How to get a standing ovation
* The art of schmoozing
* How to create a community
* The top ten lies of entrepreneurs
* Everything you wanted to know about getting a job in Silicon Valley but didn’t know who to ask

It really is a good book for seasoned and budding marketers and anyone in “business”. Highly recommended.