Because books don’t make themselves.

I just love this post from our friends over at 37Signals.  Please read the post — it’s quick and great.  

There are many things that I love about this post (and topic) and it leads to many thoughts for us here at Appingo.  Here are some reasons why I love this post:

1. It is based on an email exchange between two all-stars — Malcom Gladwell (writer of TIPPING POINT, OUTLIERS, ETC) and Bill Simmons (the most brilliant sports writer on the planet and former Boston Sports Guy).  So just this email exchange alone is enough to make me love this post.
2. It reminded me of my favorite NCAA team from the early-90’s, the Tulane Green Wave.  They were an underdog in almost every game they played, but they won a lot of them (started 13-0 and made it to the second round of the tournament).  They were constantly outmatched, but created a very unique 2nd team (which they called The Posse) that pressed and ran and pressed and ran and dunked and ran and pressed and dunked and overwhelmed the competition whenever they entered the game.   And they didn’t start — they came off the bench.  It was unusual, surprising, different and confusing enough to allow them to win a lot of games.  I liked being reminded of the Green Wave and The Posse.  
3. I agree 100% with their thoughts on strategies for underdogs.  Of course underdogs should press.  Of course they should run the no-huddle.  And then they should mix-it up.  Of course underdogs shouldn’t follow the same playbook as the favorites — why would that work?
4. I also love the “No one ever got fired for buying IBM” reference.  We face this everyday — big publishing houses are really no different than a lot of other big corporations.  People make decisions that will save their own assess first and think about the strength, viability and sustainability of the company second.  The world of big publishing needs to quickly rethink this mentality.  The clock is ticking…
5. We believe that the book publishing industry is moving into the Age of the Underdog.  We think that the “value” that the big publishers have had for years is eroding pretty quickly (for many reasons) and we think that the publishing landscape is going to become much more fragmented and that the little guys are going to define and power the industry for a long time to come.  (see the emerging role of the Book Producer!)
6. Most of all, I love the post because here at Appingo, we’re underdogs.  We’re not a VC-backed start-up with a ton of capital.  We don’t have the ability to bring in a seasoned, experienced team of professional publishing software executives, salespeople, etc and we don’t have big marketing budgets.  We’re an underdog.  Unfortunately, unlike in boxing where featherweights don’t have to fight heavyweights, in the world of business, we’re all in the same ring.  We’re in the same ring as the big, enterprise software providers that serve the publishing industry.  We do have to fight with the heavyweights and that means, as the post mentions, we have to fight differently.  No doubt about it, most everyone has bigger guns than Appingo.  But that’s ok.  I’d rather have better shooters than bigger guns.  

On a final note, with all that said, we don’t spend much time thinking about the fact that we’re underdogs (in fact, it’s never come up in one of our team meetings until today after I read this post).  We are focused on providing great value to our customers and our users.  We are focused on being true to who we are and on making a difference in the publishing world.  Time will tell, but right now we’re feeling good about being the underdog.  

Derek