Book news

Made to Stick has received some honors recently, and it is high time we said thank you.

• Made to Stick was named Best Business Book of 2007 by The 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards. (We also won the award for best Advertising/Marketing book.) This one has special meaning for us because we know and like and respect the people at 800-CEO-READ. Thank you!
• Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper named MTS #1 on its Top 10 Business Books list for 2007. Thank you to Harvey Schachter for the honor!
• The Amazon editors picked the book #2 of the Top 10 Business titles of the year.
• MTS was one of the Top 100 Customer Favorites of 2007 on Amazon. We were #26, which put us behind The Reagan Diaries and ahead of O.J.’s If I Did It. That seems about right.

We are grateful for the awards. Thanks everyone.

[NOTE: This promotion is now over — we will be posting the accumulated stories soon!]

Calling all teachers! We want to trade you a free signed copy of Made to Stick for one of your stories. Here are the details.

We want your story of a classroom lesson that stuck. Maybe itâ??s one of yours, or maybe youâ??re bragging on the brilliant lesson of a colleague or one of your past teachers. Tell us about it â?? give us the details of what the teacher did and how the students responded. Tell us why you think it worked so well.

There are just a few rules: (1) Itâ??s got to be the story of a specific lesson, recounted in enough detail that a general reader, who of course wasnâ??t there the day it was taught, can understand the power of it. (2) Youâ??re giving us permission to publish the story, along with your name. (3) Youâ??ve got to be a teacher â?? weâ??ll need a school address to send the book to.

An example would be the post below this one about Oceanography. Note that this is a forward-looking storyâ??itâ??s about a teacherâ??s plan for a future class. Weâ??re anticipating that most people will want to tell stories about classes that have already happened, but if youâ??d rather talk about something youâ??re cooking up, thatâ??s okay too.

Teachers are on the front line of stickinessâ??is there another profession where making ideas stick is such an everyday necessity? Thatâ??s why weâ??re excited to start compiling these â??greatest hitsâ? stories. Our hope is that we can weave together this collection of stories and make it available for free via our site, so teachers everywhere can get a bit of inspiration.

So let your teacher friends knowâ??we want to share their sticky stories with the world! Have them email us with their stories. [Email address: heaths@fastcompany.com] The first 100 stories we receive will get a free signed book! [NOTE: This promotion is now over — we will be posting the accumulated stories soon!]

So I’m looking for some advice on an absurd situation that I have blundered myself into. Here’s the backstory: I was looking for some kind of fun giveaway related to the book. I had the profound insight that maybe the giveaway should relate to stickiness. So I Googled all manner of variations on “sticky,” which yielded some interesting findings that shall not be repeated here, but ultimately I found something that sounded cool: handmade candy from Sticky, an Australian company. Not only is their name “Sticky,” they can actually create custom orange “lollies” with the words “Made To Stick” on them! Are you kidding me? So this seemed a no-brainer solution.

Cue up mistake #1. Moderation has never been my strong point, so I ordered $619 of custom candy. The candy would be divided up into neat little glass jars. 4-6 weeks later, the box arrives! And it is filled with many neat little glass jars — that have been shattered to smithereens, along with the candy inside! The box was packed with all the care that your teenage grocery store clerk uses to bag your groceries. So imagine if your groceries had to cross an ocean. The net effect was more shrapnel-rific than sticky.

I emailed the company, along with a couple of choice photos, and a very nice woman apologized for the situation and agreed that a refund was in order. That was on May 10. Since then, this nice women has gone AWOL.

Any advice? Is there a Better Business Bureau equivalent of Australia? Etc. And I hope the moral of this story is clear for the children: Always opt for custom duct-tape over custom Australian candy…

I’ll be a guest today on the American Marketing Association’s internet radio show, Marketing Matters Live! The time slot is Noon – 1pm Eastern. They will be taking calls, so anyone who has a hard question, please go to lunch during this time. More details here (as well as the link to the live audio). Come have a listen, should be fun.

Here are the links to our Fast Company columns to date. They make great weekend reading. Sort of.

July 2007: Leadership is a muscle. How is your attitude about your abilities affecting your success?

June 2007: Give ’em something to talk about. Your product may be good, but will it spark a conversation?

May 2007: Success can make you stupid. Did you win because you were smart or because you tipped the scales in your favor?

April 2007: Polarize me. If you want people to like you, first decide who needs to hate you.

March 2007: The myth about creation myths. The power and perils of a great backstory.