Here are 100 books that Cumulative Advantage fans have personally recommended if you like
Cumulative Advantage.
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Professionally, I’ve been a journalist, author, speaker, marketer, adjunct professor, consultant, startup founder, and more; but at my core, I’m a storyteller and a lifelong student. I read voraciously about creativity, writing, media, marketing, psychology, and design, and I’m fascinated by drawing connections between these things. (I’m still allowed to say “read” when I mostly consume audiobooks, right?) I’m currently focused on helping other creators and storytellers master their craft, refine their big ideas, and figure out their unique differentiators, through The Creator Kitchen, the mastermind program I run with fellow creator Jay Acunzo.
Ok, you caught me. I recommended the first edition of this book in a previous list. But this, my friends, is the second edition which, as the cover art indicates, is 10% funnier than the first.
Ann’s work is a testament to the power of honing your unique voice in a way that makes your work easy to identify, clearly differentiated, and dang near impossible to recreate well. Now that we’re battling it out against generative AI, not just other writers, this book serves as both an instructional guide and a case study on developing a distinct voice, in and of itself.
Finally a go-to guide to creating and publishing the kind of content that will make your business thrive. Everybody Writes is a go-to guide to attracting and retaining customers through stellar online communication, because in our content-driven world, every one of us is, in fact, a writer. If you have a web site, you are a publisher. If you are on social media, you are in marketing. And that means that we are all relying on our words to carry our marketing messages. We are all writers. Yeah, but who cares about writing anymore? In a time-challenged world dominated by…
I’ve been a content creator for over 20 years now. I’ve written six books on content creation and content marketing and founded two companies dedicated to helping companies create better content (The Tilt for content entrepreneurs and Content Marketing Institute for enterprise marketers). Some people credit me for coining the term “content marketing,” but really I only popularized it. Oh, and I’m very passionate about the color orange.
If you love formulas as to why content works or falls flat, then Content Chemistry is for you. Andy supplies a multitude of formulas for things like your content mission statement, how to get found for search engine optimization, and how to implement content inside your organization. Andy started this book in 2011 and continues to build upon it. It’s a treasure trove for content creators.
This edition has been updated to reflect new technology and marketing trends. The result of thousands of conversations about web marketing with hundreds of companies, this handbook is a compilation of the most important and effective lessons and advice about the power of search engine optimization, social media, and email marketing. The first and only comprehensive guide to content marketing, this book explains the social, analytical, and creative aspects of modern marketing that are necessary to succeed on the web. By first covering the theory behind web and content marketing and then detailing it in practice, it shows how it…
I have been around businesses most of my life. Both my parents ran them, and as an accountant and business coach, I have helped many grow and be successful. I have also seen many businesses fail, including my father’s, and so I have been passionate about what it takes to build a successful business for many years. I am constantly on the lookout for great authors who have been through a journey and learn from their successes and failures. It was hard to select only 5 books in this review as I have read so many, but I hope that you find these as useful as I have.
I am always on the lookout to learn from experts in their field, and Marcus Sheridan is clearly one of these. Having built his swimming pool business to a Multimillion dollar revenue, it was great of him to put his marketing lessons into this book so that people like me could copy them.
His insights into building a website into an industry-leading reference site that pulls in so much more business were a revelation. He gave a clear structure on where to start, what to include, and how to make the search engines love the content that I post.
The revolutionary guide that challenged businesses around the world to stop selling to their buyers and start answering their questions to get results; revised and updated to address new technology, trends, the continuous evolution of the digital consumer, and much more
In today's digital age, the traditional sales funnel-marketing at the top, sales in the middle, customer service at the bottom-is no longer effective. To be successful, businesses must obsess over the questions, concerns, and problems their buyers have, and address them as honestly and as thoroughly as possible. Every day, buyers turn to search engines to ask billions of…
I’ve been a content creator for over 20 years now. I’ve written six books on content creation and content marketing and founded two companies dedicated to helping companies create better content (The Tilt for content entrepreneurs and Content Marketing Institute for enterprise marketers). Some people credit me for coining the term “content marketing,” but really I only popularized it. Oh, and I’m very passionate about the color orange.
Many times, content creators don’t focus on the entire plan…from the initial creation of the text, the audio, the video through to measurement. Well, fret no longer. Melanie takes her personal experience as well as interviews with content creators at companies around the world to develop a framework that works. The step-by-step format is can’t miss.
"Marketers struggling to create engaging content will have a savior in The Content Fuel Framework. The Focus + Format approach is a simple yet highly effective way to inspire numerous rich ideas to rescue any content marketing program." —Lee Odden, CEO and Co-Founder of TopRank Marketing
In The Content Fuel Framework, trained journalist and award-winning content marketer Melanie Deziel shows you how to maximize your creativity by systematizing it. This simple framework catalyzes the brainstorming process, making idea generation effortless and nearly automatic. No more writer's block. No more asking "what should I post?" No more waiting for that "big…
In 2012, I escaped my corporate job to found Enchanting Marketing. I had discovered I love writing and I love teaching people how to write even more. I help small business owners and solo flyers find their voice and share their ideas with gusto, so they can captivate, educate, and inspire their audience. I created this list with 5 book recommendations as a mini-course on writing for the web. There’s little overlap between the books; they all complement each other. Happy reading and happy writing!
For writing online beyond your own website, I highly recommend this book. It presents both the big picture and the nitty-gritty of content marketing for small businesses.
What I like about this book is that the authors understand that as a small business, you can’t do everything and be everywhere. So, choose where you want to be and create content that captivates, educates, and inspires your audience.
WINNER: Small Business Book Awards 2016 - Community Choice - Social Media Category
WINNER: Small Business Book Awards 2014 - Community Choice - Marketing Category (1st edition)
Make sense of content marketing in the digital world with this award-winning, practical guide to using content to grow your business and raise your brand.
From websites, white papers and blogs to tweets, newsletters and video, content is king in the digital world, now more than ever before. Get it right and you have a huge opportunity to connect with clients and customers in ways they appreciate and trust - they will be…
I am an author, nonfiction writing geek, and marketing practitioner on a mission to help people make a positive impact with their writing. Before setting out on this path, I spent many years as a marketing consultant, working with over 100 technology companies to articulate their messaging and value to customers and prospects. My first book, Subscription Marketing, was my manifesto about the changes needed in marketing to thrive in the emerging, subscription-based world. It’s now in its third edition and has been translated into multiple languages.
In Content Inc, Joe Pulizzi makes a bold proposal: What if you build your business on content—before you sell anything? Start with content, build a community, figure out what people want, and then serve it to them. A company built this way will have a culture aligned with its customers’ values. Now in its second edition, this book will make you rethink content marketing and entrepreneurship.
Updated for the post-COVID economy! The proven low-risk, cost-effective way to launch a successful business
Today's markets are getting more and more dynamic, and customers are increasingly fickle. Meanwhile the COVID-driven economic crash has made mitigating financial risk more important than ever.
From one of today's leading experts in content marketing, Content Inc. is the go-to guide to building a solid small-business by establishing a loyal audience before you sell any products or services. In these pages, Joe Pulizzi provides a lower-risk, better way to build a successful business by re-engineering the process that so often leads to failure: You'll…
My book is a collection of monthly Editor-in-Chief letters to the readership of World Neurosurgery, a journal that I edit. Each essay is short and sweet. The letters were written for neurosurgeons but have been re-edited so that they apply to all human beings. They cover topics such as leadership,…
In 2008, as an author who had a message that I was desperate to get out into the world, I had a decision to make… to continue to pitch my non-fiction book for new moms to traditional publishers or to create a publishing company and publish it myself. I chose to create a publishing company and publish it myself. I loved the publishing and book marketing process so much that I started to help other authors to market their books.
Once you decide how you are going to publish your book, you will have to promote it, whether self-publishing or traditional publishing, in order to sell it. Dr. Jan Yager’s book is your next step to learn book promotion and offers the details behind the next steps on your book marketing journey.
Yager has written over 50 books, both traditionally published and self-published. She has pretty much seen it all and recognized that authors needed a detailed guide for how and where to market their books. She decided to write a book dedicated to book promotion by presenting material in a logical fashion, in the order of any book launch promotion timeline.
The sections of her book make sense and are easy to follow for authors: The first section is about what to do before your book is published. The second section is about what to do after your book…
"Writing a great book is the easy part. Getting people to buy the book is wicked hard. Jan’s book shows you what promotion to do so you increase the possibility that your book becomes a bestseller.”
―Jeffrey Fox,bestselling author,How to Become a Rainmaker
"Being an author is 50% creative and 50% promotion. Jan Yager's comprehensive and practical book, How to Promote Your Book, tells authors exactly what they need to know and do to promote their book. I'm recommending it to all the authors I know including those whose books I share through my Bedside Reading program."
Jonah Berger is a Wharton School professor and internationally bestselling author ofMagic Words, Contagious, Invisible Influence, and The Catalyst. Dr. Berger is a world-renowned expert on natural language processing, change, word of mouth, influence, consumer behavior, and why things catch on. He has published over 80 articles in top‐tier academic journals, teaches one of the world’s most popular online courses, and popular outlets likeThe New York Times and Harvard Business Review often cover his work. Berger has keynoted hundreds of major conferences and events like SXSW and Cannes Lions, advises various early-stage companies, and consults for organizations like Apple, Google, Nike, Amazon, GE, Moderna, and The Gates Foundation.
Many of the books by Seth Godin are amazing, but this is a personal favorite.
Great ideas aren't just ideas; they're like viruses. They spread from person to person in powerful, unexpected ways. The book explores this idea and talks about some of the factors that lead ideas to spread and some of the consequences of their diffusion.
Seth Godin examines how companies like Napster and Hotmail have successfully launched idea viruses - a customer-to-customer dialogue. He offers a recipe to creating your own idea virus and shows how businesses can use idea virus marketing to succeed in a world that doesn't want to hear from traditional marketeers anymore.
I am a Canadian social anthropologist living in England, and my research is about material culture and heritage in Mexico. I have always been fascinated by the ways that people make their cultures through objects, food, and space; this almost certainly started with my mum who is always making something stitched, knitted, savoury, or sweet, often all at the same time. I hope that you enjoy the books on my list – I chose them as they each have something important to teach us about how our consumption of things affects those who make them, often in profound ways.
Bill Wood’s engaging and accessible book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in travelling to Mexico or Mexican arts and crafts. Based on research with Zapotec weavers from Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Made in Mexico shows how it is impossible to understand how and why such items are made today without also knowing about the ways that Oaxaca and Zapotec people are marketed as part of an industry that sells authenticity and “Zapotecness.” Through clear analysis of the marketing of Oaxaca as a tourism destination and the making and marketing of Zapotec textiles as indigenous art and artifacts in both Mexico and the United States, Made in Mexico shows how Mexican craftworks today are very much global cultural commodities.
Made in Mexico introduces us to the people, places, and ideas that create Zapotec textiles and give them meaning. From Oaxaca, where guides escort tourists to weavers' homes and then to the shops and markets where weavings are sold, to the galleries and stores of the American Southwest, where textiles are displayed and purchased as home decor or ethnic artwork, W. Warner Wood's ethnographic account crosses the border in both directions to describe how the international market for Native American art shapes weavers' design choices. Everyone involved in this enterprise draws on images of rustic authenticity and indigenous tradition connecting…
We all want peace. We all want a life of joy and meaning. We want to feel blissfully comfortable in our own skin, moving through the world with grace and ease. But how many of us are actively taking the steps to create such a life?
I believe that people need stories and book marketing done well can help readers find the stories they need to craft a more hope-filled, compassionate, and meaningful life. The authors I meet are sharp and creative, but many don’t have experience with book marketing. I find coaching authors to amplify their platforms is a rewarding way to support the community. My front-row seat to watching my clients’ dreams become reality is so inspiring. This book was a collaboration of book marketing experts, whom I admire, and I was so honored they agreed to share their insights with our readers.
Writing, publishing, and marketing a book is hard. One of the biggest hurdles for me is my mindset.
Be the Gateway offered me a path to finding my creative why and using that to focus my creativity and my marketing efforts. If you find the creative life a struggle, this book can help you reclaim your excitement.
Many people feel the drive to do creative work, but get overwhelmed by the process of connecting with an audience. They follow best practices in marketing that never seem to pan out, don t produce results, and make them feel lost and oftentimes, frustrated. Be the Gateway offers a powerful way to have an impact. If you want to share your voice and inspire people with your writing, art, craft, or creative idea, you have to be the gateway for them. Instead of throwing products out into the marketplace, you open them up to a new way of looking at…
