All Marketers Are Liars

I'm not sure if the fact that it's a game changes anything or not as I don't play in that space myself. But just in terms of marketing in general, some of the essentials include: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing - Al Ries & Jack Trout Positioning - Al Ries & Jack Trout Repositioning - Jack Trout (with Steve Rivkin) Differentiate or Die - Jack Trout (with Steve Rivkin) The Ultimate Marketing Plan - Dan S. Kennedy The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes All Marketers Are Liars - Seth Godin The Purple Cow - Seth Godin

All Marketers are Liars, Permission Marketing, Crossing the Chasm, Positioning, 4 steps to the epiphany That's probably enough for a while. And if you haven't already read Getting Real then read that too.

Everything from Seth Godin. Permission Marketing, All Marketers are Liers and Purple Cow are my personal favorites.

I only read non-fiction that's counterintuitive. I figure, hey, I'm pretty smart, so if it's intuitive then I can probably figure it out on my own. A list of stuff I cite most often: No Contest & Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton PG's essays & ITConversations interviews The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto The Singularity is Near by Kurzweil This graph: http://alexkrupp.com/picture_library/plot.jpg Dee Hock's essay on leadership A handful of blog posts by Mark Cuban All Marketers are Liars & Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin. All of the books that Seth recommends are also worth reading. Bruce Schneier's interview on ITConversations Magic Ink, an essay by Bret Victor War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges The Cluetrain Manifesto (the book) I'm sure there's a lot more, but that's what comes to mind right now.

Here are three books that I have loved reading 1. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie I know its been mentioned already, but truly this is a book worth mentioning twice. For the introverted or the arugmentative type and for anyone else, this book hits alot critical and sometimes overlooked human traits that everyone should be aware of in their daily interactions with other people. A few quotes by Carnegie. Avoid arguments "you can't win an argument, because if you win it you lose it, and if you lose...well you lose it." "few people think of themselves as bad people" -means regardless of how they look,dress or talk, most people are appproachable with a smile and a "hi". "people will always strive to justify themselves". All three of these quotes are connected. 2. The Innovators Solution - Christensen and Raynor If you've ever heard the quote "First they ignore you,... then they fight you, then you win." by Gandhi. This book puts it in perspective in relation to how small companies over take large companies. 3.The 48 Laws of Power _ Robert Greene.…

Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Taleb and Seth Godin's book All Marketers Are Liars have just completely changed the way I think about the business world. I'm looking forward to getting to The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb.

My list, categorized: Business & Management 1. Innovator's Dilemma and Innovator's Solution by Clayton Christensen 2. Built to Last and Good to Great by Jim Collins. Built to Last is more applicable for startups. 3. Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks. Anyone who has to manage a team of programmers and hasn't read this will fail utterly, unless they've already failed before (or been on a failing team). There's a lot that's counterintuitive about software project management. 4. Peter Drucker's work. Kinda long and repetitive, but some good insights. Marketing 1. All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. I like this better than Purple Cow, Guerilla Marketer's Handbook, and The Big Red Fez. Most of those have fairly obvious stuff. 2. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell 3. Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore Technical 1. Building Scalable Websites by Cal Henderson 2. High Performance MySQL by Jeremy Zawodny 3. Pragmatic Programmer by...well, it's mentioned elsewhere here. There are lots of other technical books I like, but most of them aren't directly relevant to the startup I'm building

About 14 months ago, I had little knowledge of how to execute a startup. In particular, I wasn't familiar with any online marketing tactics. The following books helped me a lot in that respective, and more: 1. Positioning, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing/Branding, Focus, Marketing Warfare 2. Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars, Permission Marketing (I didn't like "The Big Moo", "Free prize inside" or "Small is the new Big"). 3. Founters At Work 4. Wikinomics, Wisdom of Crowds, The Tipping Point (Blink! was alright). I am looking forward to reading "The Long Tail" and "The starfish and the spider"...has anyone read them yet? 6. Why We Buy 7. Hackers and Painters 8. The E-Myth revisited 9. The Art of the Start 10. On War, The Art of War by Machiavelli and Sun Tzu (not exactly for startups, but definitely useful) 11. Crossing the Chasm