Here are 100 books that Cumulative Advantage fans have personally recommended if you like
Cumulative Advantage.
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Throughout my career, I’ve come across so many everyday people with awesome ideas of life-changing potential for a select group of people. And most of them struggle to reach the people they can most help. This is such an incredible shame! I’m passionate about connecting those entrepreneurs and business owners who have great ideas with the people who will most benefit from their solutions, so both parties win. A big part of that is ensuring their marketing engages their target audience, hence this book list.
This book was like a trusted mentor in book form, helping me craft content that’s clear, engaging, and downright effective. Ann strips away the boring writing advice everyone seems to give and delivers practical advice (which aligns with my own copywriting philosophy) with warmth and wit. It’s not just about grammar or structure—it’s about connecting with your audience in a way that feels authentic.
What I loved most is how versatile this book is. Whether I’m writing blog posts, website copy, or emails, I’m always using something Ann taught me. Her book is packed with actionable tips and relatable examples, and her conversational tone made it a joy to read. This is another book in my toolkit that I flick through whenever I need inspiration.
Finally a go-to guide to creating and publishing the kind of content that will make your business thrive. Everybody Writes is a go-to guide to attracting and retaining customers through stellar online communication, because in our content-driven world, every one of us is, in fact, a writer. If you have a web site, you are a publisher. If you are on social media, you are in marketing. And that means that we are all relying on our words to carry our marketing messages. We are all writers. Yeah, but who cares about writing anymore? In a time-challenged world dominated by…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve been a content creator for over 20 years now. I’ve written six books on content creation and content marketing and founded two companies dedicated to helping companies create better content (The Tilt for content entrepreneurs and Content Marketing Institute for enterprise marketers). Some people credit me for coining the term “content marketing,” but really I only popularized it. Oh, and I’m very passionate about the color orange.
If you love formulas as to why content works or falls flat, then Content Chemistry is for you. Andy supplies a multitude of formulas for things like your content mission statement, how to get found for search engine optimization, and how to implement content inside your organization. Andy started this book in 2011 and continues to build upon it. It’s a treasure trove for content creators.
This edition has been updated to reflect new technology and marketing trends. The result of thousands of conversations about web marketing with hundreds of companies, this handbook is a compilation of the most important and effective lessons and advice about the power of search engine optimization, social media, and email marketing. The first and only comprehensive guide to content marketing, this book explains the social, analytical, and creative aspects of modern marketing that are necessary to succeed on the web. By first covering the theory behind web and content marketing and then detailing it in practice, it shows how it…
I have been around businesses most of my life. Both my parents ran them, and as an accountant and business coach, I have helped many grow and be successful. I have also seen many businesses fail, including my father’s, and so I have been passionate about what it takes to build a successful business for many years. I am constantly on the lookout for great authors who have been through a journey and learn from their successes and failures. It was hard to select only 5 books in this review as I have read so many, but I hope that you find these as useful as I have.
I am always on the lookout to learn from experts in their field, and Marcus Sheridan is clearly one of these. Having built his swimming pool business to a Multimillion dollar revenue, it was great of him to put his marketing lessons into this book so that people like me could copy them.
His insights into building a website into an industry-leading reference site that pulls in so much more business were a revelation. He gave a clear structure on where to start, what to include, and how to make the search engines love the content that I post.
The revolutionary guide that challenged businesses around the world to stop selling to their buyers and start answering their questions to get results; revised and updated to address new technology, trends, the continuous evolution of the digital consumer, and much more
In today's digital age, the traditional sales funnel-marketing at the top, sales in the middle, customer service at the bottom-is no longer effective. To be successful, businesses must obsess over the questions, concerns, and problems their buyers have, and address them as honestly and as thoroughly as possible. Every day, buyers turn to search engines to ask billions of…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’ve been a content creator for over 20 years now. I’ve written six books on content creation and content marketing and founded two companies dedicated to helping companies create better content (The Tilt for content entrepreneurs and Content Marketing Institute for enterprise marketers). Some people credit me for coining the term “content marketing,” but really I only popularized it. Oh, and I’m very passionate about the color orange.
Many times, content creators don’t focus on the entire plan…from the initial creation of the text, the audio, the video through to measurement. Well, fret no longer. Melanie takes her personal experience as well as interviews with content creators at companies around the world to develop a framework that works. The step-by-step format is can’t miss.
"Marketers struggling to create engaging content will have a savior in The Content Fuel Framework. The Focus + Format approach is a simple yet highly effective way to inspire numerous rich ideas to rescue any content marketing program." —Lee Odden, CEO and Co-Founder of TopRank Marketing
In The Content Fuel Framework, trained journalist and award-winning content marketer Melanie Deziel shows you how to maximize your creativity by systematizing it. This simple framework catalyzes the brainstorming process, making idea generation effortless and nearly automatic. No more writer's block. No more asking "what should I post?" No more waiting for that "big…
In 2012, I escaped my corporate job to found Enchanting Marketing. I had discovered I love writing and I love teaching people how to write even more. I help small business owners and solo flyers find their voice and share their ideas with gusto, so they can captivate, educate, and inspire their audience. I created this list with 5 book recommendations as a mini-course on writing for the web. There’s little overlap between the books; they all complement each other. Happy reading and happy writing!
For writing online beyond your own website, I highly recommend this book. It presents both the big picture and the nitty-gritty of content marketing for small businesses.
What I like about this book is that the authors understand that as a small business, you can’t do everything and be everywhere. So, choose where you want to be and create content that captivates, educates, and inspires your audience.
WINNER: Small Business Book Awards 2016 - Community Choice - Social Media Category
WINNER: Small Business Book Awards 2014 - Community Choice - Marketing Category (1st edition)
Make sense of content marketing in the digital world with this award-winning, practical guide to using content to grow your business and raise your brand.
From websites, white papers and blogs to tweets, newsletters and video, content is king in the digital world, now more than ever before. Get it right and you have a huge opportunity to connect with clients and customers in ways they appreciate and trust - they will be…
I am an author, nonfiction writing geek, and marketing practitioner on a mission to help people make a positive impact with their writing. Before setting out on this path, I spent many years as a marketing consultant, working with over 100 technology companies to articulate their messaging and value to customers and prospects. My first book, Subscription Marketing, was my manifesto about the changes needed in marketing to thrive in the emerging, subscription-based world. It’s now in its third edition and has been translated into multiple languages.
In Content Inc, Joe Pulizzi makes a bold proposal: What if you build your business on content—before you sell anything? Start with content, build a community, figure out what people want, and then serve it to them. A company built this way will have a culture aligned with its customers’ values. Now in its second edition, this book will make you rethink content marketing and entrepreneurship.
Updated for the post-COVID economy! The proven low-risk, cost-effective way to launch a successful business
Today's markets are getting more and more dynamic, and customers are increasingly fickle. Meanwhile the COVID-driven economic crash has made mitigating financial risk more important than ever.
From one of today's leading experts in content marketing, Content Inc. is the go-to guide to building a solid small-business by establishing a loyal audience before you sell any products or services. In these pages, Joe Pulizzi provides a lower-risk, better way to build a successful business by re-engineering the process that so often leads to failure: You'll…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I have done some pretty cool things in the arts. To share a few, I’ve given TEDx talks, I have produced and co-starred in a film that made it to Cannes, I have written 11+ books (one of which was a Barnes & Noble # 1 best seller), I have spoken at SAG/AFTRA and Writer’s Guild, I am an entertainment attorney, and I have an album up on iTunes/Apple Music/Spotify, etc. I really love inspiring people, and helping them to achieve life dreams. I hope this list will help inspire some of you to go after your dreams, too, and with a passion!
Too many books on how to succeed in the arts talk about how you are a "product." These people are idiots who know nothing about business. If you are an actor, singer, or painter, you are not a product. That implies you are able to be sold to multiple people at the same time. And re-used. And replaced when you break. Sorry, you’re not a product.
You are an entrepreneur, and you are selling…a service. And that service is…invisible. That’s what this book taught me. I am not a product. I am a salesman, and I am selling the invisible.
The techniques required to sell a service are far different from selling a product, and heck, I just didn’t like thinking of myself as a product anyway! I am a unique human being with incredibly unique talents. Aren’t you?
SELLING THE INVISIBLE is a succinct and often entertaining look at the unique characteristics of services and their prospects, and how any service, from a home-based consultancy to a multinational brokerage, can turn more prospects into clients and keep them. SELLING THE INVISIBLE covers service marketing from start to finish. Filled with wonderful insights and written in a roll-up-your-sleeves, jargon-free, accessible style, such as:
Greatness May Get You Nowhere; Focus Groups Don'ts; The More You Say, the Less People Hear; Seeing the Forest Around the Falling Trees
I am a Canadian social anthropologist living in England, and my research is about material culture and heritage in Mexico. I have always been fascinated by the ways that people make their cultures through objects, food, and space; this almost certainly started with my mum who is always making something stitched, knitted, savoury, or sweet, often all at the same time. I hope that you enjoy the books on my list – I chose them as they each have something important to teach us about how our consumption of things affects those who make them, often in profound ways.
Bill Wood’s engaging and accessible book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in travelling to Mexico or Mexican arts and crafts. Based on research with Zapotec weavers from Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Made in Mexico shows how it is impossible to understand how and why such items are made today without also knowing about the ways that Oaxaca and Zapotec people are marketed as part of an industry that sells authenticity and “Zapotecness.” Through clear analysis of the marketing of Oaxaca as a tourism destination and the making and marketing of Zapotec textiles as indigenous art and artifacts in both Mexico and the United States, Made in Mexico shows how Mexican craftworks today are very much global cultural commodities.
Made in Mexico introduces us to the people, places, and ideas that create Zapotec textiles and give them meaning. From Oaxaca, where guides escort tourists to weavers' homes and then to the shops and markets where weavings are sold, to the galleries and stores of the American Southwest, where textiles are displayed and purchased as home decor or ethnic artwork, W. Warner Wood's ethnographic account crosses the border in both directions to describe how the international market for Native American art shapes weavers' design choices. Everyone involved in this enterprise draws on images of rustic authenticity and indigenous tradition connecting…
The start of my own online teaching business in 2010 felt both liberating and frustrating. I enjoyed working for myself but struggled to make my offers unique, attractive, sustainable, and successful. I had no idea how to make my voice heard in the highly-saturated and fast-growing online teaching industry. Following the advice of famous online business gurus, I lost track of what I wanted my business to accomplish and burned out following every online teaching trend there was. The books I’ve selected helped me align with my own vision and values, inspired me to overcome my limitations and succeed on my own terms.
Most online teachers I’ve worked with detest the idea of marketing, and yet this is something we cannot avoid especially when running our own business. Bernadette Jiwa defines marketing as a story you tell that has the capacity to change the world. In the book she shares multiple purposeful stories of people who shared their message in the most authentic way and how their courage moved others to action and brought about change. This is a guide into marketing that will make you excited about the change you seek to make and how your small online teaching business can transform the world.
"Every Jiwa book is a special event, and this one is no exception. Memorable stories about stories, practical, hard-won insights about how people change and why. Short and powerful.—"SETH GODIN
What makes some bad ideas successful, and why do many good ideas fail?
It turns out that there’s no such thing as a bad idea or a good idea. There is only the wrong story or the right story. The right story is one that is trusted. It is believed because it is told by the right person, for the right reasons, in the right way, at the right time,…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I grew up reading my dad’s hardcore sci-fi and my mother’s romance, horror, and thrillers. This led to my desire to become a published author. Prior to 2012, I was a bestselling Canadian author with a handful of titles published. After hitting #4 on Amazon’s Bestsellers list, I was approached by agents and publishers. Within weeks I signed multiple contracts. Trident Media Group asked to represent me. Yes! I signed two audio deals with Audible, and multiple deals with foreign publishers. One of my mottos has always been to help other writers when I can, so I share my marketing expertise and experiences.
As Godin states: “Great marketers don't use consumers to solve their company's problem; they use marketing to solve other people's problems.” This book is for anyone in sales. For writers, you may find you see book marketing in a new light after reading this book. Not only is there psychology in how consumers (readers) make their decisions, learning to sell books also has a psychology behind it. Once you know who you are selling to and understand their needs, you can and will sell more.
#1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller & Instant New York Times Bestseller
A game-changing approach to marketing, sales, and advertising.
For the first time Seth Godin offers the core of his marketing wisdom in one compact, accessible, timeless package. This is Marketing shows you how to do work you're proud of, whether you're a tech startup founder, a small business owner, or part of a large corporation.
No matter what your product or service, this book will help you reframe how it's presented to the world, in order to meaningfully connect with people who want it. Seth employs his signature blend…
