My box of galley copies arrived in the mail yesterday. They’re filled with uncorrected typos, but otherwise look great. Wiley printed about 500 of them, and they’re mostly going to journalists and book reviewers, with some going to different wholesale and retail outlets. I have 20 copies to give away to readers of my blog and Crypto-Gram.
Earlier this month, I asked readers to suggest methods of distribution. There were a lot of good suggestions, but one stood out:
The best way to achieve that may be by letting people hand it personally to an ‘opinion leader.’ Their argument for which ‘opinion leader’ they think is most important *and* needs to read this the most (could be someone who talks out of his ass on the subject) gives you a good selection criterium, as well as giving some people and excuse to visit an ‘opinion leader.’
So that’s the plan. If you want a book, you have to promise to give a book to someone else. This someone should be a person who doesn’t otherwise know about me, and wouldn’t otherwise know about my book. This should be someone who would enjoy my book, and who would be likely to spread the word to others. Maybe it’s the CEO of the company you work for. Maybe it’s someone in politics. Maybe it’s just someone who influences the thinking of a lot of people. It shouldn’t be someone who would just dismiss my book out of hand, or not bother reading it because he already knows what he thinks. It should be someone who will read the book, think about it, and tell others about it.
Sometime between now and Christmas Day, send an e-mail whose subject matches the subject line of this post to schneier@schneier.com. Tell me who you’re going to give the book to and why. I’ll randomly choose ten people from those e-mails and ask them for their physical addresses. (This way, only winners have to mail me their addresses.) I’ll send each of the winners two copies of the galley: one for the winner, and the other for the winner’s thought leader. If Wiley sends me more galleys to give away, I will simply choose more winners.
Of course, I have no way of verifying that the winners actually comply. Someone could keep one copy of the galley and auction the other on eBay. I can’t stop that, but I will be cross if it happens. And I will number the galleys, so if I do ever see the book, I will know who did it.
Thank you to reader Jur, who suggested this method of distributing galley copies of my readers in response to my request. Jur, email me with your address and I will send you a copy of the galley.
Posted on December 22, 2011 at 6:09 AM •
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