June 18, 10:58 pm
The power of a book summary
Today’s continuous rapid pace combined with today’s information age has led to more people getting their info via RSS feeds (saves time) and executive book summaries. One such retailer of these hyper-condensed tomes is summaries.com. I’m not making any money off promoting these guys, but for as little as $1.92 a week you can have an 8-page summary of the latest and greatest business book emailed to you each week.
Personally, I’ve found great information in my Business Briefings CD’s. Each month I get two audio CD’s chock full of snippets summarizing magazine, newspaper, and journal articles, as well as business-related research and even business blogs. I listen to them in the car — and easily soak up a boatload of information just driving across town.
I really knew these CD’s were helpful when workshop participants would ask me how I had time to learn all the stuff I knew. I smiled—but then told them the secret of the CD’s. This is the kind of activity Zig Ziglar refers to as Automobile University.
Beside summary.com, the same company that produces Business Briefings also provides executive book summaries, as does the magazine BusinessWeek through the company Soundview. Still another such company is Business Summaries, and I’m sure there are many more.
Franky, I’m glad these guys are around, as I rarely take time to read an entire book (especially now that I have a dog that LOVES walks). But I do have time to read summaries and listen to the latest and greatest tidbits via CD while driving.
Staying on top of the lastest info has made a huge different in my career. If you’ve been thinking about it, I highly recommend taking the leap of faith and subscribing to a book summary program. Well worth the investment.
Filed in Technology, Business, Training, Management, Leadership, Selling, Corporate Culture
Another good company that provides executive summaries on the top business books is aheadSpace (http://www.aheadspace.com/aheadspace/). They provide 4-page summaries and this week’s summary is on a book about one of my favorite business authors, Peter Drucker and “The Definitive Drucker” by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim.
Thanks, Justin. I just checked them out — and with their annual subscription only $99/yr, that’s a whopping $1.90 a week. Most definitely a great deal.
Perhaps I should have titled this post “How to feed your brain for less than the price of your favorite hamburger.”
Business owners, executives, and manager constantly say “I don’t have time to read.” But if they’d buy the regular burger in the fast food drive through rather than the fancy (read: More Expensive) burger just once a week, they could get 52 book overviews a year for free.
It just makes sense. I suppose the reason many don’t subscribe to these things because they see the price (i.e., $99/year) and shy away. Yet they think nothing of dropping that extra $2 each week to supersize their lunch, not realizing it adds up the same.
Hello,
I recently created a new site with the goal of providing *free* business
book summaries. This isn’t just to undercut the other guys, but because
it favors my real goal: having an open and collaborative site where people
not only get summaries, but can discuss them. Because I think that’s where a lot
of the value is - not just reading a book, but talking about it, debating it, and
getting an idea of what other people think, and how they’ve applied the
knowledge.
Thanks,
Dave
Oops, the site, as you may have found when clicking my name, is called
Squeezed Books: http://www.squeezedbooks.com - stop by, have a look,
add a book, enhance a summary, or just leave a comment about one of your
favorite books!
Hey Dave,
Great idea. I scoped out your site and here’s what I like about it:
What I felt could be different:
Overall, GREAT idea. I agree that reading a book doesn’t do much for moving people to action. But talking about the points in the book is a huge catalyst for change. This seems to be the huge difference between what you’re doing and what the reviews are like on Amazon. Amazon shows REVIEWS. Yours is for DIALOG. I would hope that your site stays a place for dialog where people truly interact, and that it doesn’t turn into just another review site. Best of luck in this venture.
In terms of ‘too brief’, it depends on the summary you clicked on. Some
of them, like this one, are more complete:
http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/7/information-rules-a-strategic-guide-to-the-network-economy
Of course, the cool thing about the site is that anyone can jump in and add
some information, wikipedia style:-) You do have to register to add books, though.
Another option is to buy a book or two off their wishlist for someone who has done a
summary that you enjoyed reading.
Thanks for the feedback in any case!