The Reading Edge Podcast

On March 13, 2010, during a break between sessions at South by Southwest Interactive, I interviewed Rusty Shelton, who is managing director of Phenix & Phenix, a 16-year-old literary publicity agency based in Austin.

His agency helps authors build relationships using print, radio, TV, and online. Their clients include everything from the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, to true crime, to Christian books.

If you have any interest in publishing your own work taking advantage of online tools, I think you’ll find Rusty’s advice valuable and though-provoking.  In general, I found it intriguing to see into the fast-changing world of publishing through the eyes of a literary publicist who loves his job and clearly knows what he’s doing. Click here to follow Rusty on Twitter.

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I interviewed Seth Godin this morning via Skype.  He is the author of Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, published last month for Kindle, nook, Sony Reader, and hardcover.  It’s a great read, and if you purchase it on Kindle by about March 1 you’ll receive a free personal addendum, Insubordinate, in which Seth describes several people who qualify as linchpins.  What’s a linchpin?  That’s someone who has found his or her true work, as an artist does, and is overcoming the resistance of the lizard brain to actually ship stuff that matters, because it’s original and given freely.

In the early going, my own lizard brain resisted with a couple of clever arguments (noted in this blog post) to Seth’s exhortation, which will come as no surprise to him.  Lizard-like resistance is what a linchpin always faces and overcomes.

In addition to his new book, we talked about Seth’s critique of the traditional publishing industry and his vision of how Amazon, or someone, could remake the eBook platform into something much more compelling as a way for authors and readers to connect.

I prepared for our conversation by watching videos of Seth’s TED talk in May, 2009, and his presentation at last year’s O’Reilly Tools of Change conference.

Here is a complete list of Seth’s previous books.

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