Today we’re announcing a Flash Sale on Amazon’s Kindle platform, where readers can pick up a digital copy of the book for just 99 cents or 95 (ish) pence plus tax.

We felt that because we’ve had such wonderful reviews, and the great feedback from us speaking about the Pioneers in the UK, US, China and the Middle East, has been so heartfelt, we wanted to spread that good feeling and teamed up with our publisher, Kogan Page, to drop the price of the digital version on Kindle to 99 cents or pence (plus tax).

Writing this book was never about the money for Paul and I. It’s always been about telling the fantastic stories behind some of the most smart and entrepreneurial digital business people and internet advocates in the world.

We hope you’ll help us share the love by sharing this post and forwarding it within your organizations.

Click on the links below for the special offers:

Pioneers of Digital – 99 Cents on Kindle US

Pioneers of Digital – 99p + VAT on Kindle UK

And thanks again for all your support!

Cheers,

Mel Carson and Paul Springer

This is great news, especially for our Chinese pioneers, Angel Chen & Zhang Minhui, because it should give their amazing work in the region some much deserved credit on their home ground.

Meanwhile, the book continues to get great PR and 5 Star reviews from readers, so Paul and I couldn’t be more thrilled with this latest development.

If you’ve not got a copy, why not find out what all the fuss is about and pick one up:

• Amazon US  and Kindle US 
• Amazon UK and Kindle UK
• Barnes & Noble including Nook version
• WHSmith.co.uk 
• Waterstones.com 

If you’ve already read it, then thank you very much and please leave a quick review on whatever site you got it from. We’d really appreciate that!

Thanks again for everyone’s support and Kogan Page for all their hard work.

Keep checking back for more news and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook Page to keep in touch there.

Cheers,

Mel

Paul, Carolyn Everson, Mel and Andrew Sampson

The fabulous people at JWT in London very kindly donated space for our UK book launch in London late last month.

Such is the nature of a digital pioneers, most of the book’s subjects were on a jet plane somewhere in the world, but we managed to have the pleasure of Facebook’s Carolyn Everson and Stephen Fry’s business partner – Andrew Sampson – attendance.

There was a great cross section of people from the advertising world, friends and family plus students from Buckinghamshire New University where Paul heads up the research faculty of Media Design and Management.

Thanks to everyone who came. We know you had a good time because we got the bar bill!

We’ve posted all the photos on our Facebook page (we won’t mind if you like it either!) and hope to have some more news for you very soon about a very special promotion.

Cheers

Mel

Hope you’ve managed to take a peek and some of the reviews we’ve been getting. They’re all hitting exactly the mark we were trying to reach with the book, and we hope there’ll be a few more to come (especially after our UK book launch reception at JWT’s offices in London later this month).

We’ve been slowly adding pages to this site with excerpts from each Pioneer’s chapter to give you a flavour of what each of their stories holds.

Here are the first 10:

Thomas Gensemer – Blue State Digital

June Cohen – TED Talks

Denzyl Feigelson – Artists Without a Lable

Avinash Kaushik – Google Analytics

Danny Sullivan – Search Engine Land

Gurbaksh Chahal – RadiumOne

Jaron Lanier – Microsoft & Virtual Reality

Vanessa Fox – Google and Nine By Blue

John Winsor – Victors and Spoils

Angel Chen – OgilvyOne China

We’ll add more soon. We’re managing this site ourselves and we have day jobs, so it can be a bit time consuming!

Phantom Text Messages

In other news we picked up this article by Tom Chatfield on the BBC about phantom text messages and it mentions Jaron Lanier (read an excerpt from his chapter by clicking on his name above), and talks about his thoughts on social media.

Chatfield says:

“Lanier’s is a critique above what he has elsewhere called the “antihuman” perversity of many technologies: of how exploitative and reductive habits can ensnare us, via tasty digital carrots and daunting sticks. Endless sharing and clicks on “like” are, after all, far easier than taking the time to work out what we actually feel – let alone express it – while personal identity can become little more than a perpetual present of status updates, drop-down-menu preferences and instant interactions.”

This rallies well with our interview with him and his book “You are Not a Gadget” where he calls out “cybernetic totalists” in Silicon Valley for stifling creativity and individuality.

All really excellent food for thought as we continue on this social/digital rollercoaster to goodness knows where!

Not sure we have experience one of those Phantom Text Messages though.

Have you?

Mel & Paul

(Photo Credit: Gummy mobile phones)

2012 was a great year for us. We finished the book, we got through the editorial process, Kogan Page did a great job bringing the book to market on time in October and we have had lots and LOTS of really positive reviews and coverage including:

• USA Today – “Pioneers of Digital makes for compelling reading about fascinating innovators.Their curiosity, passion, drive and enthusiasm for using technology in creative ways to help people connect and interact is both contagious and inspirational.”
• Forbes.com – 2012 The First Digital Election
• The Huffington Post – Pioneers of Digital: June Cohen and How TED Talks Reached You via Online Video
• Publishers Weekly – “If you embrace new media and the spell it has cast over advertising and the world in general, this may be your lucky day. Readers will feel like kids in a digital candy shop.”
• ForeWord Reviews – “Springer and Carson have done a commendable job of collecting diverse examples representing a wide array of fascinating applications while drawing general conclusions about digital innovation. “Our aim with this book is to inspire,” write the authors. Most readers will find Pioneers of Digital does exactly that.”
• BlogBusinessWorld – “This book will guide you on a digital voyage around the world, across platforms, and many disciplines as you learn from the successes of the true pioneers of digital.”
• TopRankBlog – Pioneers of Digital: How Vanessa Fox Helped Google and SEOs Realize They Were a Perfect Match
• SmallBizTrends – “Readers interested in social media or seeking interesting business people for professional inspiration will be more that satisfied. Ultimately read Pioneers of Digital to know what it takes to truly stand out in your field.”
• Techipedia – Pioneers of Digital: How to be Part of the Next Generation of Internet Entrepreneurs
• Contagious Magazine – “The book provides an interesting series of anecdotes focusing on excellent work and success stories along with the lessons that can be learned to have an impact on the digital industry and the wider world.”

Thanks to everyone who has contributed reviews to our Amazon US and Amazon UK Pages too – much obliged.

We’ll be doing a lot more promotion in 2013, so stay tuned and please keep recommending the book to all your friends!

Buy it here!

Happy New Year!!!

Mel & Paul

Click Anywhere to Advance Slides

A current darling of the iPad App scene is Haiku Deck, a Seattle-based start up headed up by Adam Tratt.

The tagline – “Set Your Story Free” – couldn’t be more apt as you scroll through our Pioneers of Digital deck.

Please take a look and feel free to share…..

Not sure there are too many better feelings than seeing your book “In Stock” on the world’s biggest retail website, so for now we’re both feeling pretty good!

Thanks to those who have pre-ordered the book and to all those sharing it via social media:

We’ve already had a couple of FIVE STAR reviews on Amazon and ask that your add your thoughts by writing a review too.

We’d appreciate that very much!

More soon as we continue to work with Kogan Page on PR efforts!

Thanks again for all your support!

Cheers,

Mel & Paul

Number 9 in our Pioneer series reveal is Gurbaksh Chahal who has pioneered performance-based advertising three times over, learning valuable lessons on the way. His consistent successes with new technology make him an undisputed digital role-model.

Chahal quit school to start his first company ClickAgents, a performance-based ad network which was sold after two years for a reported $40m.  His second venture BlueLithium centred on behavioural targeting, and attracted the attention of much larger search networks within two years of its launch. It was eventually acquired by Yahoo for $300m.  Chahal has since applied lessons learnt from his first two ventures to RadiumOne, which captures real time audience data and utilises newly available audience tracking technologies. In 2012 RadiumOne was valued at over £500m

In Pioneers of Digital, Chahal retraces the key principles behind each company, explaining how he capitalised on technologies of the day and when he knew the time was right to sell.

Pioneers of Digital has launched in the UK and will be available on November 28th in the US – buy your copy now and check back soon for the next ‘reveal’.

Thanks

Mel & Paul

Next up in our Pioneer series reveal is Kyle McDonald who is an unconventional Pioneer. The mark he has made on Digital resulted from real-time split decisions and a belief in ‘the journey’ rather than pre-ordained objectives.  He became world-renowned as the ‘trade-up’ guy, who worked his way from one red paperclip (traded on Craig’s list) to a house within a year.

Then he gave it away to test the power of digital in other ways.

McDonald’s story and his views on the phenomenon of digital make compelling reading. His sideways look at online community values provides a fresh way in to spotting the potential of connecting with like-minds through the power of the web.

Pioneers of Digital has launched in the UK and will be available on November 28th in the US – buy your copy now and check back soon for the next ‘reveal’.

Thanks,

Paul and Mel

The trends discussed will be as follows:

TREND #1

Joeri Van den Bergh from Insites Consulting and author of HOW COOL BRANDS STAY HOT will take you behind the scenes of the brand strategies of Nokia, H&M, Levis, and Coca-Cola to reveal how to maintain your edge with the savviest generation ever.

TREND #2

Paul Springer will unpick the DICHOTOMY OF A DIGITAL PIONEER. Paul and the co-author of his book Pioneers of Digital traversed the globe interviewing the people who made the internet what it is today. From Stephen Fry to TED.com’s June Cohen, from UK Digital chamption Martha Lane Fox to key names at Google, Microsoft and Facebook (plus the man who traded a paperclip for a house and Burger King’s ‘Subservient Chicken’ campaign *ahem*) Paul will be breaking down what it takes to innovate in the digital marketing space.

TREND #3

As marketing and media professionals we all keep getting told we need to produce more content. But if everyone is producing more content, how do you make yours stand out from the rest? And how do you make people act upon it? Sonja Jefferson and Sharon Tanton will be here to help you identify what makes VALUABLE CONTENT in a world awash with information.

TREND #4

Hollywood movie studios, Icelandic investment banks, British chocolate bars and Middle Eastern airlines all figure amongst writer and brand-builder Simon Pont‘s time on the inside of Adland. In WHEN FICTION BLEEDS he’ll be taking a look at transmedia storytelling and how brands are blurring the lines between platforms (and sometimes even reality) to go viral, honing in on the Prometheus campaign which put transmedia theory into spectacular practice.

If you’re interested in going, visit the invitation page and contact us if you want a special 50% discount code as well!

Thanks and enjoy Paul’s and the other speakers’ talks. 

Regards,

Paul and Mel

P.S. You can pre-order your copy of the book here too!