The Big Moo

Seth Godin’s latest project and marketing experiment, The Big Moo, has so far been an amazing
success. For those unfamiliar with the project, the  big idea is that Seth and a host of 33 top writers and thinkers, including Malcolm Gladwell and Tom Peters, have collaborated to create a new book. Nothing new there you might think, but the real interest starts when you find out how they are marketing it.

Seth has persuaded his publisher to produce 10,000 galleys of the book, the galley being the very expensive to produce pre-publication of the book, with the intent that those who buy galleys (at $2 per book) can only buy 50 at a time and must give them to people who plan to buy a lot of copies of the $15 hardback.  The idea behind this is that major influencers will buy the galleys and  give them to other influencers who in turn will splash out, in bulk, on the published hardcover which will create an enormous buzz around the title. All the royalties raised from sales of the hardcover will then go to charity.

The big news is that Seth has announced that they have managed to sell all 10,000 galleys and that P&G have committed to buying 1,000 hardcover copies. Hopefully the galleys have fallen into the right hands and this incredible marketing experiment takes off.