If you are like me, you won’t get much from this book.

If you are up to date with social media and new marketing and advertising techniques, you won’t get much from this book.

If you are the arrogant sort that expects books to weave a tight narrative, you won’t get much from this book.

If you are the elitist sort who thinks books shouldn’t look or sound like collection of blogs, you won’t get much from this book.

So what’s that, 5% of the business world? I’d say so. The rest of you can learn from the Now Revolution.

Divided into seven sections, the Now Revolution feels like a collection of thoughts and blog posts spanning the last few years that act as a catch-all for just about everything those of us who have been paying rapt attention could probably regurgitate, though certainly not as succinctly.

The sections are as simple and obvious as most of Seth Godin’s blog posts:

Engineer a new bedrock
Find talent you can trust
Organize your armies
Answer the new telephone
Emphasize response-ability
Build a fire extinguisher
Make a calculator

Nothing new or ground breaking, but certainly solid advice that any large business could really take to heart. But honestly, if a business doesn’t know most of this stuff already, they’re pretty screwed, so they’d better be able to read and implement the Jay Baer and Amber Naslund‘s work pretty quickly.

Now for the rest of the story.

I didn’t finish the book. I tried very hard, but after the umpteenth subhead, I had to put it down to write this review. As someone who already reads Jay and Amber quite regularly, I couldn’t shake the feeling that a book publisher had simply picked two prominent bloggers and hoped that their combined reach would make a great audience, forgetting that blog writing doesn’t always translate well into long-form writing.

This reminded of another duo that tried something similar, Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, which I disliked. Kudos to Jay and Amber for leapfrogging those guys.

Buy The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social
for your corporate friends or parents and force them to read it. It may well be their only hope.

I was given two copies of this book, one to read and keep, the other to give away. But I believe that books should be shared after they are read, so I’d like to give both away. The first will be handed out to a lucky winner at the pre-planning meeting for the writers’ event I mentioned earlier.

The second will be given to the commenter who, on this post, tells me who they’d most like to give it to and why. Your boss, father, colleague, or friend is totally cool, but I’d like to know what you hope they’ll get from it.