Using the domino effect

Today, Seth Godin wrote an extremely important blog entry. He said:

"Envision the events that might happen to a brand (shelf space at Walmart, an appearance on Oprah, a bestseller, worldwide recognition, a new edition, worldwide rights, chosen by the Queen, whatever) as a series of dominos.

"It turns out that if you start with all of them at once, you'll fail.

"And if you start with the big one, you'll fail.

"But if you line up all the dominos one by one, in the right order, you may just have enough energy to push over the first one. That one, of course, adds momentum so that when you crash into the second one, that one goes too. All the way to the Queen."

This is a monumentally important post for anyone who has to promote a nonfiction or how-to book. In this post, Godin essentially tells how to plan and implement a successful marketing plan for your book.

1. Envision all the events that might happen (for Digital Video Secrets it might be something like... David Pogue recommends, reviewed in DV magazine, shelf space at B&H Photo, book review on Cool Tools.)

2. Line the events up from small to large (reviewed in DV magazine, book review on Cool Tools, shelf space at B&H Photo, David Pogue recommends)

3. Start pushing on the smallest domino (reviewed in DV magazine) and don't put your effort into anything else until you push that domino over. Once that domino begins to fall, you use it's momentum to help you crash into the second one (book review in Cool Tools) and so on, all the way up to David Pogue.