Ethical Business Practices #2- Book Endorsements

Book Endorsements

Since my book "Blogging for Business" (with Shel Holtz, Dearborn Trade Publishing) is coming out soon, this is particularly timely for me.

Books often have quotes from famous authors and others endorsing them. Often the endorsements say something similar in tone to, "This book changed my life, is better than sliced bread, and made me look and feel 20 years younger."
Did you know that usually the endorser has never read the book, or even written the endorsement! Amazing - huhh!!

It's not as bad as it sounds however. Usually, the endorser is "sold" on the book (which may not even be written yet); that it's a good book, something they like, something they approve of. They are also given a list of "sample" endorsements. They can write their own book endorsement, but usually they just choose one of the pre-written ones.

I've endorsed exactly one book, and I read parts of it and choose to modify one of the sample endorsements to make it more accurate and in my style. The book? It's on Information Security, by Jeff Stanton and Kathryn Stam, called The Visible Employee: Using Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance to Protect Information Assets - Without Compromising Employee Privacy or Trust. Yes, I did like it! (due Spring 2006)

Some people seem to endorse a lot of books - for example the Chicken Soup guys. It's well known that they like books a lot, so that's not very surprising. Hey, they can endorse my book if they like it!