Book publisher goes real-time with Truman Fires MacArthur

When President Obama chose to replace General Stanley A. McChrystal following the fallout from the general's controversial comments in a recent Rolling Stone article, the media was in a frenzy. Because McChrystal was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, over 13,000 mainstream media stories and blog posts were written in just a few days.

But what about books? It takes a more than a year to write and publish a book, right? So how can a book author jump into the fray?

A real-time ebook

Just two days after the Obama fires McChrystal news broke, book publisher Simon & Schuster released an eBook called Truman Fires MacArthur on Amazon Kindle and other ebook services.

Wow - this is an amazing example of real-time product development.

When the entire world is focused on Obama firing McChrystal, a historian provides near-instant context by releasing information on how Truman fired MacArthur. I love it.

The Truman Fires MacArthur ebook was developed in real-time as an excerpt from the 1992 book Truman by David McCullough.

Publisher Simon & Schuster took the related content from the full-length book, created the ebook, slapped on an ISBN and was selling it electronically within 48 hours of the news breaking.

I learned about this from my wife Yukari Watanabe Scott who blogged it too. She learned it from the LA Times book blog in a post Simon & Schuster releases smart eBook: 'Truman Fires MacArthur'

1) Everyone (including you) needs to develop a real-time mindset in order to see opportunities such as this.

2) Every business can profit by exploiting real-time advantages.

However, the window of opportunity closes very quickly.

Real-Time product development is just one technique I discuss in my forthcoming book Real-Time Marketing and PR. The book is a discussion on how to instantly engage your market, connect with customers, and create products that grow your business now. This book is in production now and will release in October 2010.

Comments

[John R. Harris]

Makes me wonder how many people are sitting on unpublished manuscripts that could be rushed into e-print overnight once their topic hits the headlines. But I'm looking forward to Dave's new book, Real-Time Mktg & PR. I expect it will be his best written book yet!

[Jake LaCaze]

Great post about the immediacy the Web offers. And I'm excited to hear about your new book. I'd been hoping that something new would be around the corner.

[John Deere Tara]

I'm very excited to see publishers in particular embracing ebooks. The current back-and-forth over ebook pricing has made me think that there is a real opportunity for publisher who are flexible enough to take it.

[Ryan]

Very clever, but I wonder how many people will actally purchase a book excerpt. Does the price of the excerpt go toward the full version if you enjoy it and want to upgrade?

Also, $1.99 for 35 pages seems rather expensive, especially considering Amazon is selling a used version of the entire book for $1.10.

Would the publisher get more reach if they gave the excerpt away as promotion for the full book? Maybe a better approach is for the publisher to publish/sponsor/distribute a series of articles comparing Obama's approach to Truman's, with a link to the free excerpt. This would provide more context and keep the focus on the current issue (which we care about) and not the publishing stunt (interesting mostly to writers and marketers).

[Tom Nolan]

Wow quick thinking by the publish! Not just in this industry, but across the board you gotta admire it when everyone else is sleeping or thinking about the next move some people out there are on the pulse and reacting!