When I met first met Roger McNamee, I was working with him to promote his book, The New Normal, which Portfolio published in 2004. Part big-time fund manager, part rock star (well, lead guitarist in his own band), former business manager for The Grateful Dead, and part high-tech geek who carried half a dozen gadgets on his belt, Roger was brilliant and intimidating, with a mind so facile and non-linear I always felt half a beat behind his pattern of thoughts.
When I opened the January issue of Portfolio magazine, there appeared a full page photo of Roger, his hair now shoulder length, standing next to Bono, his partner in Elevation Partners, a fund he was forming as the book was launching — a situation that alternately brought him attention and held us back from talking to some in the media. Given the fund had not yet been completely raised, it was a sensitive time. We did score press coverage in Forbes, Fortune, Fast Company, Worth, and a large feature in USA TODAY, but many opportunities were lost when journalists wanted to discuss the story of a rock star partnering in a venture firm.
The New Normal described the world post-internet boom and asserted the ways in which technology was transforming our world. Roger was, in my opinion, WAY ahead of the curve. He was describing a social and business landscape in which HE lived but most of the rest of us had yet to fully join. As we tooled around Manhattan between interviews, he was glued to one of his gadgets, getting immediate response from friends, associates and even his wife, to his appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” where he deftly delivered a three hour stint as guest host. I sat beside him carrying with what looked like a first generation cell phone, fretting all the while about what email was coming in my laptop, back at my hotel.
The article and Roger’s new fund with Bono reminded me anew of the crucial issue of timing in releasing a book.
This is a slippery issue, one that in so many ways is beyond our control. We can’t predict when the headlines will suddenly be dominated for weeks by indictments at Enron, when an accounting scandal will spread like quicksand through the major firms, or worst of all, when world catastrophe, be it a terrorist attack, a tsunami wave or a hurricane makes it all but impossible to reach anyone in the media at all.
The upside of timing is that it can boost a book’s chances of coverage. Case in point from three titles I have worked on: Hard Sell, a witty and wise memoir by former pharmaceutical rep Jamie Reidy got an enormous boost during its 2005 publication when Pfizer, the company he used to work for, laid off large numbers of reps the week the book was released; There is No Such Thing as Business Ethics by John Maxwell got great coverage in the New York Times when he was interviewed about the wake of scandals at Enron and the big five accounting firms; and F’d Companies by Philip Kaplan scored ink throughout the campaign whenever another dot com venture fell to its knees.
You can’t control timing, but you can be aware of it each and every day you’re thinking about your book. Read the headlines with an eye toward how your opinion or book’s content might be inserted in the news. And if you’re reading all your news from a handheld gadget, remember that Roger McNamee was among those who predicted that the shift to electronic information was the wave of the future.