Review: Waiting for your Cat to Bark?

Authors: Bryan Eisenberg & Jeffery Eisenberg with Lisa T. Davis
Review Date: 06/05/06
Reviewer: Eric G. Myers (EGM)

Waiting for your Cat to Bark is the long-awaited follow-up to the Eisenberg's "Call to Action", another book I highly recommend. But as Jeffery notes in the Introduction of the new book, Call to Action wasn't exactly the book they intended to write...but the new one is. I think this seems like a pretty fair statement.

As a long time online fanboy of the Eisenbergs, I had a persistent sense of deja vu when reading Call to Action. That's primarily because much of the book was culled from the Eisenberg's long and storied history of online writings via e-mail newsletter, online column and now blogs. But with Bark, the philosophy has solidified significantly. There is some old ground that needs to be covered, but that is to be expected so that newcomers can jump into the book without the pre-requisite of other readings.

Astute readers might notice that the release date for this book was actually June 13, 2006 but this review is dated June 5, 2006. As much as I'd love to say that I was one of the lucky few who received a review copy of this book, the truth is actually more mundane (though interesting in and of itself). I pre-ordered the book through Amazon expecting to get it a couple of days after the release. But imagine my surprise to discover that it had shipped last week and I actually received it on June 2, 2006 - nearly 2 weeks in advance of the stated publication date. I'm not complaining!

Let me cover the "extras" first because there are plenty of them. First, there is a CD/DVD that comes with the book. I didn't know this until it arrived. Perhaps it said so in the publisher's description. I don't know. If this had been called "How to Boil Water by Bryan & Jeffery Eisenberg" I would have bought the book anyway. So I didn't pay much attention to what the publisher had to say.

But the CD is jam packed, let me tell you. Here is what it contains:

• A Q&A video with Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg
• The full book in PDF format
• Shop.org's State of Online Retail 8 PDF
• WOMMA's Word of Mouth 101 PDF
• Two Web Analytics Association Courses
• A $50 credit for Yahoo! Search Marketing
• Resource links

A couple of these extras deserve some comment. The video is a very nice touch. The audience is made up of select individuals who got an advance read of the book and were invited to ask questions. These are some high profile people from the worlds of publishing and business. The questioning goes well beyond what is in the book and it is refreshing to hear the authors talk about their work in this format. You can clearly see the passion that these guys have for their work.

The credit for Yahoo! Search Marketing could make this book a no-brainer for some folks. I mean, $50 free? Why not? Well, hold your horses...there is a slight catch. The $50 free is apparently for new advertisers only. I suppose you could set up a new account to get around this. I don't really know. But I thought I should mention it before you go off thinking that this book will automatically pay for itself. In any case, this is a very nice perk to add. I would have bought the book without it, but its unexpected presence makes the book even more valuable. Sort of like one of Seth Godin's Free Prizes Inside.

The meat of the book (which I devoured this past weekend) is devoted to explaining the value of persuasion in motivating users to convert both online and offline. There are a ton of examples and scenarios which help to illustrate the concepts.

A lot of this information may feel like familiar ground for some new school marketers, but the text frames a lot of things I have always felt in such a nice way that I am thinking about purchasing this book for several old school marketers I know to help them "catch up." While the old schoolers are still thinking about driving traffic and attracting eyeballs, the new school marketer is thinking about creating experiences.

This book isn't exactly a "How To" but it comes pretty close to spoon feeding you what you need to know to get started in your own business.

I highly recommend this book to anyone involved in business. This includes marketers, sales people, web designers, executives and more. If I could make one small request of the Eisenbergs, it would be that their next project be a book that tries to fill the niche that Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think fills for the usability set. Waiting for your Cat to Bark is a great book for you to read and understand, but what we need is the simpler-than-simple explanation (with humor) that we can give to our bosses to read on their next plane ride. With the evolution of the Eisenberg's Call to Action into the new Waiting for your Cat to Bark, I can certainly see a wider audience for the brothers' work.

The only bad part is that I'm now done with the book and I'll have to wait to see what they come up with next.

Buy Waiting for your Cat to Bark Now

EGM - 06-05-06