I’m constantly amazed at the number of small business owners/entrepreneurs I meet that tell me about their business problems and yet when I suggest a book that will help them solve those problems, they tell me they haven’t got time to read a book about business.
As someone who reads between two and five books a week and who views my reading time as a crucial investment in both my own and my businesses future I just can’t get my head around that point of view. Missing out on all the knowledge, experience and expertise available from the books I read seems to me rather like trying to cross the road blindfolded - sure you might make it, but you’re making it unnecessarily hard for yourself.
Giving it a bit of thought however it occurred to me that I often summarise the key points from the books I read and provide the summaries to my business partners and several fellow entrepreneurs - often saving them having to read the full book. If they benefit from these business book sumaries and there are other business people out there that are too busy to read the books but would like to benefit from the expertise in them, then perhaps there is a market for business book summaries.
However like all good business ideas it’s not new, a quick search on Google shows there are at least a dozen firms providing business book summaries - what did strike me as a missed opportunity though is that not one of the big publishers seems to be doing it, given it’s another way of monetizing your inventory and summaries can help drive sales it seems like an obvious add on to a publisher.
This blog is about business opportunities and ideas that I spot, think of or hear about and think are useful and interesting. It is intended to provide ideas and inspriation for you to help you find the right business idea for you to then grow it into a successful business.
Hi John,
Like you, I hit upon the same idea, but since there are so many of them out there already, I created one with a twist: make it free, ala Wikipedia. This has an extra advantage - it’s possible to freely discuss the summaries with other people interested in a particular book. It’s in its early stages, but if you wanted to have a look, it’s at http://www.squeezedbooks.com - please feel free to write me with any comments about it.
Thanks,
Dave Welton
An interesting idea, but what I felt would be the attraction of the service was a professionally written high quality summary direct to the users email/mail box saving them the time require to go out and find out about good new business books.
Those certainly exist, getAbstract.com seems pretty good for instance. My idea is to offer something for those not willing or interested enough to shell out that kind of money, and at the same time, offer something a little bit more interactive.
How have you dealt with the copyright/IP issues?