My best advice: win little battles. Get in the habit of winning, of shipping, of having customers that can't live without you. Once you've demonstrated you know how to do the art, then go after the windmills.

Marketing is the act of inventing the product. The effort of designing it. The craft of producing it. The art of pricing it. The technique of selling it.

If you try to delight the undelightable, you've made yourself miserable for no reason.

And the reason is that until Wonder came along and figured out how to spread the idea of sliced bread, no one wanted it. That the success of sliced bread... is not always about what the patent is like, or what the factory is like - it's about can you get your idea to spread, or not.

Instead of working hard to keep their share of a shrinking pie, or working even harder to make sure the industry stays as is, I think the most essential thing legacy book industry players can do is set up independent ventures with great people and little interference and work really hard to put themselves out of business by starting at the bottom, not by reinforcing the top.

You can listen to what people say, sure. But you will be far more effective if you listen to what people do.

Perhaps marketing is about to transition to a new kind of profession, one that requires insight, dedication and smarts.