Rereading Permission Marketing

It hardly ever happens that reading a book just once is enough for me.  Even if I sort of get it the first time through, sure enough, ten years later it always happens that I have forgotten what it said for some reason.  If the book is good the first reading, I usually hang on to it.  Sooner or later I get back to it.

So it is with Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, published in 1999.   If I had actually understood everything that lay behind the words of that book, my life would have been very different.  The word ‘perspicacious‘ applies to the ideas in that book.  Even the Introduction is meaty.

“We’ve survived Java and Shockwave and MSN and multibillion-dollar investments designed to turn the Web in TV.” Permission Marketing p.20

As I set the book down for a while, I turned to my computer and saw a huge Microsoft Flash ad for Windows 7. The headline read:

“With Windows 7 you can watch, pause and record your favorite movies and TV shows.”

They are still trying to interrupt me and turn the web into TV.  I do remember that much.