Welcome to Business & Law on BookRabbit I'm the business books editor for the site, as well as my other existence as the BookRabbit MD, what I'd like to do each month is highlight some of the key titles I've seen and flag up any other interesting and related content and links.
We have decided to make the posts far more editable - including pictures/links etc so they should also get a lot more pleasant to read. This month I attended the Booksellers Association Conference in Brighton and heard an excellent piece by Michelle Harrison from Henley Centre Headlight Vision (you can read my full write-up at http://blog.bookrabbit.com/2008/05/12/consumer-and-social-trends-2/).
This presentation highlighted several trends that I thought may be useful to explore in books. Experience continues to grow in importance with 'me-time' shifting to more shared approached and 'we-time', experience marketing veterans James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II wrote a book published towards the end of last year called 'Authenticity' published by Harvard Business School Press: http://www.bookrabbit.com/catalogue/detail/bookid/1393988 The title takes a very comprehensive look at what authenticity means for a business and how customers perceive it, worth checking out. There was also a strong trend towards the growth of Generation Y as they start to get old enough to join the work place - I found precious little published on them so far, feel free to post any titles you'd recommend! One I did find however is: http://www.bookrabbit.com/catalogue/detail/bookid/1286143/The-Kids-are-Alright 'The Kids are Alright' talks about a lot we know already - e.g. GenY-ers are us but more pronounced (e.g. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y) they're very 'live experience' oriented, and of course 'digital natives' - however the title is good to make you consider step-by-step how you will address this audience.
One other trend worth considering is that of 'death experience' - we're likely, the Henley Centre felt, to see further cultural focus on death as Boomers (born 1945-65) who focus on experience, will consider their own 'death experience' in context as they see their parents die. We have already seen this in the top ten selling book 'Last Lecture' born of Randy Pausch's YouTube upbeat video of his actual last lecture, as he is dying of cancer, spread around the internet. You can see the book, and the video: http://www.bookrabbit.com/catalogue/detail/bookid/1585991/The-Last-Lecture
Of note.. BookRabbit is a result of a larger trend online to develop around people actually interacting, for a push towards more social spaces on and offline. I couldn't do this update without mentioning Clay Shirky's 'Here Comes Everybody' which is a fantastic romp though what all this social stuff means for business and for life in general. See him and the book at: http://www.bookrabbit.com/catalogue/detail/bookid/3383235/Here-Comes-Everybody-The-Power-of-Organizing-without-Organizations
Ones to watch.. 'Buy-ology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy is Wrong' by Martin Lindstrom, always controversial, not always right (IMHO!) but always worth listening to, the book isn't out until September 2008, however we have a video on the title which is worth watching now. http://www.bookrabbit.com/catalogue/detail/bookid/1746447/Buy-ology-How-Everything-We-Believe-About-Why-We-Buy-is-Wrong
Lastly, the word has entered into common usage 'crowdsourcing' however Jeff Howe, who coined the term, hasn't written the definitive title until now, details at: http://www.bookrabbit.com/catalogue/detail/bookid/3254097 True to form the cover was crowdsourced too - see the link in the page. Let me know any titles you recommend, and if you want to follow this thread don't forget to hit the 'keep me updated' link at the top.
Good trading Kieron
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