So I’ve decided to actually write a book…

Posted by Chris

September 21, 2007

…cause I obviously don’t have enough to do on a regular basis.

A little while ago I took what was, in reality, a half-hearted stab at creating a book. I didn’t do anything original, just took the first 150 MMM columns that I had written, tried to standardize the look and feel, and published what I originally titled “MMM: The Book” over at Lulu. So far I’ve sold one copy, and that was one that I bought myself.

But I thought a couple weeks ago that it was time to write a proper book. It’s something that’s played around at the back of my mind for a while but I never really figured out a good angle. But then I did and felt right foolish for not having thought of it before. Maybe I just needed to noodle it out until all the pieces clicked mentally and they finally did.

In retrospect, I’m an idiot. After all, I work in new media and have become more and more interested in the possibilities of the social media world over the last five years or so, a period that includes my building of MMM into a legitimate brand that can stand on its own. So the book I’m writing is about how social media has – and is – changing the way movies are being promoted, advertised and otherwise marketed. Makes sense, all things considered, right?

Of course, as in all things social media, the wisdom of crowds is an important factor. So I’m writing the book in public and soliciting community input on a PBWiki I’ve setup just for this project. You can find that wiki here. The pages are broken up along the lines I see the book roughly being put together. Things may change, the order may shift, but this is how I structured it.

As I write stuff I’ll post it to the appropriate wiki page. You can see what I’m talking about on the Introduction and Chapter 1 pages. I’d love for the people who read MMM to get involved, correct my mistakes and fill in the gaps in my research. If you know of something that’s just perfect for that chapter that I haven’t covered, leave a note to that effect. The one thing I’m going to ask is that community editing be done in the “Comments” section and not the in-line text. That way I can pick stuff out and make changes as I see fit.

Sound like a plan?

It should be noted that I don’t have a book publishing deal or anything like that right now. Haven’t even seriously looked into what it would take to secure one. If anyone wants to drop me a line about someone that might be interested in a book about social media movie marketing I’ll follow up on that lead.

If this book project does come to fruition all commenters/contributors will, of course, be given appropriate shout-outs in the final product and whatever other perks I find myself in a position to offer.

I’m really interested to see how this plays out. Again, the wiki link is: http://moviemarketingmadness.pbwiki.com/FrontPage

–Chris