Do you know what the difference is between PR and advertising? Advertising is when you say how great you are. PR is when other people say how great you are. PR is better.

People are free or cheap. Marketing: using Twitter or blogs. Cheap or free. Infrastructure: call up Amazon, call up Rackspace, terabytes of data in the clouds, thousand dollars, two thousand dollars.

The first good reason to write a book is to add value to people’s lives.

Companies can add value and simultaneously promote themselves if their product or service truly improves the lives of their customers. I mean really improve lives, not wishful thinking, rationalization. That's the acid test.

"(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010." Every entrepreneur has a few slides about how the market potential for his segment is tens of billions. It doesn't matter if the product is bar mitzah planning software or 802.11 chip sets. Venture capitalists don't believe this type of forecast because it's the fifth one of this magnitude that they've heard that day. Entrepreneurs would do themselves a favor by simply removing any reference to market size estimates from consulting firms.

Don't ask people to do something you wouldn't.

An editor who is a mentor, advisor, and psychiatrist. Don't kid yourself-a good editor will make your book better.